Here an article about American drivers have a blinding headlight problem. It could last for years.  Sometimes not just those SUV and trucks, but as jacked up suspension system can screw up the headlight alignment as well

Not so difficult to check where the dipped beam ends on the road and adjust...
Non halogen headlights (LED, Xenon), very intense and cool white to bluish also don't help much.

I wonder if dealers still adjust headlight aim on new vehicles now. Given the number of vehicles I see with extremely glary misaligned factory headlights I have my doubts they're even aimed properly. Back then the dealers were supposed to check headlight aim and adjust before handing off the keys to the customer.

And don't get me started on the shift in colour temperature for the factory headlights from ~3000K halogen to 5000K/6500K LED.

Checking that the beam alignment is correct and won't dazzle oncoming vehicles is part of the MOT over here. 

I have hard time to believe there are factory cars coming with misaligned headlights, that would be way too risky for the car makers. My guess is, it is the later "custom tunning", what is responsible for the misalignments on new cars. And improper repairs and dodgy maintenance on the older cars. To me it is really strange, there is no systematic way to force such cars off the roads. I understand at many places are no mandatory regular certified/state inspections, but I would expect mainly the police has the authority to directly put vehicles that do not meet the minimum roadworthyness standards, or at least have the authority to get the vehicle checked by a certified inspection and then if not road worthy, ban its further use till fixed and passing that inspection after the repair.

 Back when I worked for a new car dealership , part of the dealer prep was to check the alignment of the headlights . I do remember fixing headlights on brand new cars which were no where near correct ! Some incomplete vehicles (trucks & vans mostly) even came with a card hanging from the rear view mirror telling the dealer or final builder to aim the headlights and properly set the wheel alignment after vehicle completion !

 I don't remember ever prepping a new car of which everything was perfect ! Most dealer prep lists are at least a couple of pages long and require everything from checking fluid levels , lugnut torques , tire pressures , vehicle functions , etc.

 I'm gonna say that most dealers aren't checking the aim of the lights .

Yeah, my hunch is the dealer skipping or doing a bad job on checking headlight alignment to save money. Besides if the car makers were approached about this, they would probably just say the dealer is supposed to check the headlight aim prior to delivering the vehicle to the customer and deflect the blame to the dealers.

TBH most of the vehicles I see with bad headlights are usually all factory made within the last 4 years with presumably stock LED headlights and usually not one of those vehicles you would do custom mods on.

In terms of annual/bi-annual inspections, there is zero required in Ontario at the moment. So unless you either plan to transfer the ownership or you plan to use your vehicle for ride-shares, vehicles don't have to get inspected for fitness when renewing the plate. There used to be a emissions test required every two years for plate renewal but that was cancelled a few years ago. 

While regulations exist here and the police can pull over vehicles deemed unfit for public roads, the actual enforcement is quite lax and drivers can get away with a lot of stuff here like too dark tints, "loud poppy" engine and exhausts, and modded headlights, etc. 

 The other thing I noticed over the last decade or so is that modern headlights don't have the aiming "pads" that the older ones had . Most , if not all now just have a bubble level on them . The problem with that is that unless the headlights are aimed on a perfectly level surface , the headlights won't be aimed properly ! I've yet to see a concrete slab that's perfectly level in any building !

I noticed that on some vehicles, adjusting headlight aim isn't as easy too. On mine, you have to remove the entire front bumper to access all the headlight adjustment points while on some all the adjustments are all accessible just by opening the hood.

IIRC I believe adjusting headlight aim used a common task that was explained in the owner's manual for older vehicles but I believe on newer vehicles you get directed to the dealer instead.

 GEE , and why are headlights blinding now ?  I wonder !

It is possible the final alignment (headlights, wheels,...) to be the part of presale service job the dealer is supposed to do, at least the check whether ir was not affected by the transport. But doing a poor prep her is asking for quite a big legal troubles: I doubt the laws allow the sale of not road worthy car, at least the seller jumps a lot of hoops in the form of something like disclaimers to be explicitely separately signed or so.
And I also would not expect it is only the headlight what is misaligned, but with the wheels it will be the same story. And that is asking for quite a serios crash.

And for headlight alignment: On modern cars with a dynamic leveling or so it is not just aiming the lights whenever you want, you have to tell the computer to move it to the reference position first and for that you need a scanner. On some cars even the alignment screws are fully replaced by adjusting the reference position in the car computer. Plus you need the aiming gear (a box with calibrated optics and an aiming scale) to really aim it right, so although not that much inaccessible, it is a garage work, where one would expect the surface to be level.
And I would expect with most modern cars the headlight alignment would be fully automatic, but then the cameras would be the things to be aligned in the service (most likely by setting up a reference scene and telling the computer to adjust to it, again via the diag scanner or so).

Either way the dealers are supposed to know the exact procedure for the car and do it the right way, so there is no way a blinding or poorly driving car would made it to the public road...

 The adaptive headlights and dynamic leveling are just starting to show up here on new vehicles . We'll see what happens !

@wide-lite 1000  - Agreed, we'll see if they live up to their claims IMO.

Can't read the linked article since its on msn.
But it seems most vehicles i see with HID or LED headlights are glarebombs on wheels!

The article is about cars running with heavily misaligned headlights, ovten even when new leaving the dealerships. And the fact the modern cold color and  brighter technologies making the consequence worse.