Thier recent email:
I appreciate your concern and willingness to act. This is a real health and quality of life issue. The science is on our side and, unfortunately, so are the accident statistics. The last few years have seen an historic spike in traffic fatalities and common sense dictates that lights that blind drivers would be a major contributor to this phenomenon.
I would like to outline three levels of action you can take to help make this legitimate grievance into a national and international movement.
Level 1: The most direct action you can take is to actively promote my petition calling for a ban on blinding and distracting car lights at change.org It can be found here:
https://www.change.org/p/u-s-dot-ban-blinding-headlights-and-save-lives
This is the newest petition and the most up to date. It is also on a politically neutral platform and I believe this issue is as politically neutral as it gets.
For a $10 donation to change.org you can put this petition in the inbox of 1,000 potential signers, politically aware people who have signed petitions in the past. If each of you reading this donated just ten dollars, we could put this petition and the awareness of this issue before tens of thousands of people. Imagine the snowball effect if we all did this on a monthly basis.
I keep hoping the petition will go viral. We really need upwards of a 100K signatures before we could compel congress to take this issue seriously. As more and more lights are added to the streets, we may hit a breaking point, until then please consider a contribution to the petition (none of that goes to me or lightmare.org) and drop the petition link in your social media, etc.
Level 2: Take action on future campaigns.
I have some ideas about how we can fan the flames and get this issue talked about. Broadly speaking, we can organize formal protests and we can take our issue to the courts.
Protests: Now, we won’t be clogging the streets any time soon but I was recently on CBS News NY and got a feel for how the news cycle works. Even if just a few of us were to take action such as formally protesting outside our local congress person’s office for an hour on one day, we could write up a press release covering our concerns and get coverage.
On one level, what we want is to get this out there in the public consciousness. We want people to know that other people are seriously impacted by these lights. We want them to know the AMA has determined that this type of light causes pain and damage to the eye and drastically suppresses melatonin. We want them to know these lights trigger migraines. And, finally, we want them to know that as these lights have proliferated fatal road accidents have spiked.
Modest political action can result in press-coverage that may then turn this into a “thing” or a “meme” that takes on its own life.
Legal/Courts: It is a medical fact that these lights cause pain and damage to the human eye. It is also a fact that everyone has a right to go outside without unduly being caused pain and damage. Therefore, these lights should be banned.
I believe that there is a class action lawsuit to be had. It’s just an idea at the moment but any help you could give on this front, as well as being named in the suit, would help.
Level 3: Become a Leader.
The truth is, I’m no Erin Brockovich. I’m just a citizen who is sensitive to these lights and doesn’t want to live in a world where they’re everywhere. My hope is that someone out there with political/organizing acumen and a passion for this issue will step forward and lead on this issue. Is that person you? You could take up the lead for Lightmare USA or start your own organization. Until then, I will continue to do what I can.
Thank you for taking the time to read this long email. Please feel free to respond with your level of interest, skill set, ideas and whatever else you think is helpful.