lights flick on and off or turn off when driving at night

My headlights started flashing on and off and then turned off completely when I was driving home 4 nights ago. This is the second time this problem has come up. The first time this happened was when my wife was driving the car one night about a year ago. Now she is so afraid of this car that she will not even drive it, even in the daytime. I replaced the headlight switch, the burned wire and the burned connector last year and the lights worked OK until 4 nights ago when they started flickering off and on again. Now I know how my wife feels. This is VERY SCARY and VERY VERY DANGEROUS when the lights go out while driving on a dark road. There is also some kind of a clicking sound coming from the dash panel when the lights start flashing on and off. My car is a 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis GS with only 46,777 miles. I am the second owner. The first owner was over 90 years old and the car was parked in a garage most of the time. I see on the internet where this is a problem on a lot of late model Ford cars also. Apparently this has been an issue with several models of Ford cars for many years and is continuing to be a serious life threatening problem. Looking at the wiring diagram, as I recall from a year ago, a lot of the things on the dash are connected to the color coded wiring circuit for the for the lights, even the cigarette lighter. This circuit may possibly be overloaded and allowing it to draw too much current resulting in overheated wiring. After personally experiencing what my wife experienced with the lights, I am almost afraid to drive this car myself and I have been a mechanic for well over 40 years. This is a VERY DANGEROUS PROBLEM and Ford Motor Company needs to address this problem before it causes a serious accident and/or causes someone to be killed.