These days everyone is fixing up their car to be the best it can be. Emissions laws get stricter every year; high gas prices mean keeping the engine, tires, and body in tip top shape; and the struggling economy means maintaining vehicles for as long as possible before taking out loans to purchase a new one.

One part that's commonly ignored, though, is the headlights. As headlights gradually get yellow and begin to droop, people don't notice that anything's changing, and then suddenly there's a dear right in front of them that they couldn't spot when it walked out onto the side of the road. Don't let this happen to you!

With more and more deadly accidents caused by poor headlight maintenance, there are a few cheap things you can do that will probably dramatically improve your nighttime driving vision. First off you can try cleaning the front of your headlights yourself. There are a lot of cleaners out there that will do a remarkable job brightening up the plastic without the need to open up anything. Many police vehicles are maintained in this way.

If that's not enough, try taking your car into the shop and asking them to re-aim your lights. This won't be very expensive, since it's quick and there are no new parts needed, and it can help the power of your lights to go farther. This process also involves cleaning out the reflectors inside the headlights, which will improve the functionality of your headlights even further.

If it comes down to it and you need new bulbs, it can be expensive. Sometimes it costs hundreds of dollars to replace headlight bulbs, which can be quite daunting. Original bulbs can be replaced with xenon lights, which go for around $10 and are much brighter.

This option can be fantastic if you need the extra brightness or the extra pocket change. And if you're lazy, it can mean that you don't have to worry about cleaning a thing because the xenon lights will outshine that dirt and match the quality of your original lights in their factory-fresh hay-day.

Ensuring that your headlights function properly takes a little bit of time and a little bit of money, but really the price isn't so unreasonable. If you don't do it, you might be paying for a whole new car, or a whole new hospital bill very soon, especially since a lot of reckless driving happens at night when people assume no one's going to get in their way. Don't be roadkill, don't make roadkill, don't put off servicing your headlights!