Headlights let you see objects on the road in time to stop, but don’t necessarily allow you to distinguish holes.

If that’s the standard then driving at night is reckless behavior.

I stand by what I wrote. If you are overdriving your headlights, you are driving negligently. You're the driver, you are responsible for looking where you're going.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I agree overdriving your headlights is reckless, however remaining stationary isn’t enough to distinguish one black void from another. This is a function of the limits on vision not speed.

Which is why the municipality should be liable for not properly closing off the road well before the bridge crossing, and putting a big, red and white reflective striped fence several feet before the edge visible from a distance after the road closing as a second barrier/sighted warning.

In theory absolutely, but that doesn’t mean you can actually sue.

“In United States law, state, federal and tribal governments generally enjoy immunity from lawsuits.[48] Local governments typically enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity

If you can't see, pull over. This isn't rocket science.

If you ever drive at night then you’re discarding your own advice here.

Not at all. I slow down when I can't be sure of the road ahead.

Going slow isn’t enough.

Unless you stop, get out, and poke the road with a stick, you frequently can’t tell it’s there. Or at least frequently compared to how far people drive.

It’s ignorable because the road is so infrequently missing not because you can always see it.

If you can't see the road, you need to pull over and stop. This is not difficult to understand.

People see the edge of the road just fine, we even make a point of adding reflective paint to important bits of it. It’s the occasional black voids in the center which everyone just ignores as irrelevant.

Headlights being mounted so low results in long shadows from minor imperfections in the road surface which could hide huge holes. I can only assume you’ve become so used to this it doesn’t even occur to you that it’s an actual risk, thus proving my point.

PS: Hood geometry also plays a role here. There’s no point in casting light down at an angle that the driver would be unable to see it but that’s getting into the weeds.