Headlights

Is it me, or are car drivers less concerned than they used to be about having two working headlights? On my evening commutes recently, I seem to have noticed more than the usual number of cars with missing headlights, so a couple of nights ago I decided to do a completely unscientific survey.

I counted 100 cars travelling in the opposite direction, in a space of about 2 miles. Of these:

4 had one headlight not working
1 had no headlights working (he was driving in the dark, and heavy rain, on sidelights, and I assume that was not from choice; in a long line of vehicles, you can probably get away with it, although heaven help him if he had to finish his journey up a country lane).

So that is 5 in 100, or 1 in 20, whose cars would instantly fail an MoT test as unroadworthy.

You can add to that 2 out of the 100 who had those 'fog' lights mounted below the bumper which point up and therefore dazzle everyone, and 6 where the lights were adjusted to be pointing straight ahead and into everyone's eyes. That makes a total of 13 in 100, or almost 1 in 7, whose lights were causing discomfort or danger to everyone else.

I wonder if some people just let their cars deteriorate over the year, and then take them for the MoT and say "if it's wrong, fix it". Once a year.

I can't remember seeing as many as this before. Is it the recession?

Or just typical car driver stupidity?