You're right, and it's actually even worse when the road has very reflective white lines. Basically, everything outside of the road is invisible. However, in France, they somehow haven't figured how to not have their lines disappear when it rains ever so slightly.

I think that there's some kind of middle ground. Older cars used to have pretty dim lights. When my dad got a Citroën C5 with Xenon lights many years ago, it was a game changer. That car and one almost identical one (Peugeot 407) were fairly popular around these parts when they came out, and I don't remember ever having issues with their headlights blinding me.

But something started to shift some 5 years ago: more and more cars started having blinding lights. Combined with taller and taller cars, it started being a pain.

I also think that people pay less attention to the state of their cars. Some (like that C5) have auto-levelling lights, and the Xenons seem to last forever (never had to touch them in almost 20 years of service). However, I have the impression that there are more and more cars with headlights which are simply out of whack. I base that judgement on the fact that most of the time, only one of the headlights will blind me, while the other seems fine. And I'm mostly talking "basic" cars, not some high-end mercedes with matrix lights or whatever they're called which may be misdetecting something.

The rain thing is true anywhere I've driven. Even worse, when there are old white lines grinded away for some change, and new white lines added 0.5 lanes away. In certain wet conditions the old lines become equally or more "white" than the new ones.