For all those that live in big cities and are required to drive to work, it is inevitable that when driving we will see vehicles that seem to have an issue with their headlight, or taillight, or brake light or something else that seems suspicious but because we are traveling at a high rate of speed and there often doesn’t appear to be a good place to try to have a conversation with the driver of the other vehicle, we thus notice things but aren’t able to comment to the driver about them.
One of the most dangerous things we will notice is those who have a headlight or both headlights out, in which, though we would figure they have to know about it, surprisingly, some people are ignorant of such. Indeed, a one-headlight vehicle is dangerous to other drivers, especially when their vehicle color is dark, as well. Still, the only way that we can inform someone that their headlight is out is to toggle quickly with our bright high beam, which may or may not get them to understand that they have a headlight problem.
On the other hand, when we are trailing another car, we can see things such as a non-functioning taillight or brake light which is quite obvious to us, and probably not obvious to them, because virtually no one periodically checks their taillight or brake light, so it would behoove us to inform them of that problem, but in this age of society in which we don’t know whether someone else is armed, in a bad mood, or just not up to what appears to them to be nonsense, it probably is ill-advised to beep our horn, or toggle our bright high beam, so the better part of valor is to get a snapshot on their license plate number or just to remember it.
For all those who obtain that license plate number of a vehicle that appears to have a problem that is going to be dangerous not only to that car but also to other vehicles on the road, it would be sensible to have a database that people can go to, so as to report an issue observed about another car. The problem, though, with having that database is that it needs to be well-known, which is best done by having periodic public announcements that this is the database to utilize to report overly polluting vehicles, malfunctioning brake lights, and so on. The second thing that needs to be emphasized is that the ticketing department of police departments should not have access to that database because what should not be happening is for the police to see that database as being one that they could therefore utilize to issue a ticket to the offender, which doesn’t resolve the issue but simply makes it to be more of a burden on the offender who probably in a lot of cases doesn’t know that their brake lights aren’t working property.
In sum, anything that we can do that will help to inform another driver of a malfunction or an area of their vehicle that appears not to be working correctly is something that we ought to bring to their attention, demonstrating thus how a good neighbor treats another.