I think it's pretty realistic, to be honest.
I've driven rally stages at night, and it's bright as anything - the light has lots of surfaces for things to reflect off of. But, if you drive on a beach, for example, with nothing but sand around, there's nothing for the lights to reflect off of.
High beams just aim off into the sky where it can travel aimlessly and do nothing, and the low beams are low beams - they reflect off of the ground directly in front of the car, but do not offer much in terms of forward (vectored) visibility.
That's just science.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refln/u13l1a.cfm <---- There is not much luminous light at Willow Springs. It's all reflected light from the luminous headlights of your one car (no, the AI cars don't have beams) to light up... Nothing, really. There's barely anything for anything to reflect off of.
In the absence of a porch light or a street light, the neighbor's house can no longer be seen; the grass is no longer green, but rather black; the leaves on the trees are dark; and were it not for the headlights of the car, it would not be seen approaching the intersection. Without luminous objects generating light that propagates through space to illuminate non-luminous objects, those non-luminous objects cannot bee seen. Without light, there would be no sight.
That's not to say that it's perfect, though, because I would imagine that the moon could do much, much more to aid us in our quest for sight. There's a pretty simple way to envision this, too - imagine if the sun's light reflects off of the moon, causing it to illuminate the snow or sand, it is
actually quite bright. That would be much more beneficial to our vision problems at Willow Springs. It's almost like daytime, really, and it's a really cool effect when the moon shines on sand or snow because it's incredibly bright, but the shadows are much, much darker.
