Blinded by the Light

I have been out driving late the last three nights and I am being driven to distraction. 

When I was learning to drive, way back in the dark ages apparently, I was taught that one should turn off one’s bright headlights when oncoming cars approached, or when one came to close to another vehicle on the road.  I have always done this, and when someone forgot to turn off their lights, as I too have occasionally done, I would flash them, flipping my high beams on and off, with the expectation that another driver would do the same to me and I would respond, and that the person being flashed would reduce their beams in response.

But lately, more and more people drive with their brights on and do not turn them off.  I live in an area with a great many winding hilly roads without adequate street lamps.  High beams are often a great boon at night, especially as there is a lot of open countryside and a substantial deer population.  But what I am finding is that I dread driving at night because I am often blinded by some oncoming fool’s lights.  Not only do people drive with their high beams on all the time, they don’t turn them down when I flip my brights back at them.  And it is not jut the oncoming traffic.  Another driver was behind me going up to Rhinebeck tonight, following too closely, with his or her high beams on, practically blinding me from behind.  When I got to the wider part of the highway, I gratefully moved to the right hand lane and slowed down just to get this person from behind me and regain my vision before I got into the village itself.

Whatever happened to courteous driving?

And I would think this would go beyond courtesy.  If the driver of an oncoming car is blinded by your headlights he may not be able to see the road or may so be distracted that he swerves directly into the oncoming lights, not intentionally of course.  Has anyone correlated frequency of high beam usage with accident rates?