[teslabox]

My theory is the manufacturers' marketing departments went to the engineers and said "we can't sell cars with safe headlights anymore, please make the next model's headlights seem brighter than they actually are."

Blue-white headlights are actually much less functional for human vision than yellow/amber headlights, so the engineers had to use the regulatory loophole to exponentially increase the output of their marketing-imposed blue-white lights.