The Kenyan Glare Problem

Glare is worse than brightness: it's bright light scattered into your eye, and it's amplified by anything on the glass between you and the world.

The east–west commute. Heading east at dawn or west at dusk puts the low sun directly in your eyes — the worst glare geometry, striking the eye rather than the road. On commuter routes this is a daily, predictable hazard: reduce speed into the sun, use the visor, and remember that oncoming drivers facing the same sun may not see you at all.
The dirty windscreen — the multiplier nobody accounts for. Dust, smears and wiper-haze don't merely dim the view; they scatter incoming light into a blinding wash exactly when the sun or an oncoming beam hits them. A windscreen that is perfectly usable in flat light becomes a white-out facing the low sun. This is why the cleanliness point in The Daily Check is a vision item, not a cosmetic one — and why dust seasons make it a frequent check, not an occasional one.

Key takeaways

Glare is scattered light, not just bright light — the low east–west sun is the worst geometry, and drivers facing it may not see you either
A dusty or smeared windscreen multiplies glare into a white-out — clean glass, inside and out, is vision safety equipment

Quick check

Your windscreen looks fine in normal light but blinds you when you turn toward the low evening sun. Why, and what's the fix?

A) The glass is faulty and must be replaced

B) Sunlight is simply brighter than headlights; nothing can be done but squint

C) The visor is broken — glare is otherwise unavoidable

D) Dust and smears scatter the low sun into a glare wash — invisible in flat light, blinding into the sun; the fix is genuinely clean glass, inside and out