“I’ve been briefly dazzled by some bike lights when driving”
At what, a few yards? Rather than several thousand feet or whatever?
RAF Lyneham is only a few miles away, and on final approach the Hercs were quite low enough to see the aircrew, and modern high-power flashlights have a useful range of a couple of hundred metres or so, the capability to dazzle at twice, three times that is perfectly possible.
Some bike lights are very distracting, and I’m not talking a few yards, I’m talking 75-100 metres; hell, I’ve got a 230 lumens flashlight that can illuminate a house well enough to be able to make out the stonework fifty metres away, there are 4000 lumen bike lights available from the likes of dx.com for peanuts.
We’re not talking Maglites here, these are very powerful lights with a pretty focused bright centre spot.