IIHS Pushing for Better Headlights

[SubLGT]

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/iihs-announces-tougher-criteria-for-2020-awards

https://www.autonews.com/regulation...ts-iihs-beefs-criteria-top-safety-awards

Quote
...The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that good or acceptable headlights must be standard equipment for vehicles to qualify for its 2020 Top Safety Pick+ award as it toughens criteria for its safety awards next year.

"In the past, a vehicle would get the award because it has the optional, available headlights. But this year, we want to see those headlights as standard equipment," Joe Young, media relations associate at IIHS, told Automotive News. "This is a good way to encourage automakers to stop equipping vehicles with crummy headlights that don't light the road."

"Decent headlights should be a given, and we hope this change to our criteria will push manufacturers to make them standard across their lineups," David Zuby, IIHS chief research officer, said in a statement Wednesday.

The IIHS, based in Arlington, Va., is a nonprofit research organization that analyzes how to make motor vehicles safer.


It is good to see IIHS attempt to get the US auto industry to improve the performance of their headlights across the board. NHTSA does not seem to be interested in having all headlights be good performers. And thus we have the current situation in which a legal OEM headlamp is often a poorly performing headlamp, with excessive glare and/or insufficient illumination at distance. Federal lighting regulations set the bar very low for legal headlamp performance.

 

[KrisZ]

Yes I think this is a step in the right direction. I see too many LED implementations that are very distracting and blind the oncoming traffic with glare.
Too much emphasis on looks and not enough on function.

 

[Pew]

Omg yes please. It ridiculous how blinding those F150/Expedition/Yukon/Escalade headlights are to any car.

 

[spavel6]

Granted, there is a huge difference between the DOT-approved, legal LEDs and the "off-road-use-only" drop in LEDs or HIDs that are used in an existing halogen application.

I can never understand why those cars don't get pulled over and ticketed for the huge glare they create.

 

[MoneyJohn]

What took so long?

Originally Posted by spavel6
Granted, there is a huge difference between the DOT-approved, legal LEDs and the "off-road-use-only" drop in LEDs or HIDs that are used in an existing halogen application.

I can never understand why those cars don't get pulled over and ticketed for the huge glare they create.


I agree 100%. LEd implementation of Acuras, Corolla, F-150, and Cadillac are horrible. It literally gives me a headache, even though I try to look away from it. Illegal LED installation should get a warning and 2-day notice to replace them with legal lights.

 

[Kestas]

This usually falls on deaf ears, but - in the name of safety - I campaign for getting rid of tinted front windshields in cars. I've had cars with no windshield tint and the difference is, well, like night and day. I don't think I've seen a car in the past 20 years without tinted windshields. Nowadays when I drive at night all I see is dark roads and very bright white and red lights from cars and traffic controls, blinding me.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

This could be problematic if brightness becomes a negative attribute especially if the criteria involves some sort of test of glare for oncoming drivers.

 

[aquariuscsm]

I really wish they'd bring back glass and get rid of all this plastic garbage.

 

[PimTac]

Originally Posted by Kestas
This usually falls on deaf ears, but - in the name of safety - I campaign for getting rid of tinted front windshields in cars. I've had cars with no windshield tint and the difference is, well, like night and day. I don't think I've seen a car in the past 20 years without tinted windshields. Nowadays when I drive at night all I see is dark roads and very bright white and red lights from cars and traffic controls, blinding me.

This is a very good point and a great comment.

 

[Job]

Maybe it is young eyes are better, but I remember the round sealed beam glass headlights always lit the road beautifully. I liked driving at night. Now the plastic yellows and it just doesn't seem even when they are new that it is as good as way back when. Since there were no plastic LED aftermarket lights then everyone was in the same boat. The highway patrol used to set up inspections along roads and test headlights. I didn't pass once and had to get them aimed at a shop and reinspected. They seemed to understand then that oncoming blinding people causes accidents.

 

[Colt45ws]

Originally Posted by Kestas
This usually falls on deaf ears, but - in the name of safety - I campaign for getting rid of tinted front windshields in cars. I've had cars with no windshield tint and the difference is, well, like night and day. I don't think I've seen a car in the past 20 years without tinted windshields. Nowadays when I drive at night all I see is dark roads and very bright white and red lights from cars and traffic controls, blinding me.

Never seen tinted front windows. Sometimes a 3" strip across the top?

 

[spavel6]

Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Maybe it is young eyes are better, but I remember the round sealed beam glass headlights always lit the road beautifully. I liked driving at night. Now the plastic yellows and it just doesn't seem even when they are new that it is as good as way back when. Since there were no plastic LED aftermarket lights then everyone was in the same boat. The highway patrol used to set up inspections along roads and test headlights. I didn't pass once and had to get them aimed at a shop and reinspected. They seemed to understand then that oncoming blinding people causes accidents.


I am all for this. Combine it with DUI, and other fix-it issues (bald tires, non-DOT mods, exhaust, etc).

 

[pitzel]

Originally Posted by spavel6

I can never understand why those cars don't get pulled over and ticketed for the huge glare they create.


Because there's not a diagnostic test for such. And short of seizing a modified vehicle, and having the lighting tested in a laboratory.. An incredibly expensive endeavor.

I do think that manufacturers should be put on the hook for proper functioning of things like lenses, much like they are for seatbelts and emissions controls, for an extended period. The number of vehicles manufactured between the 1990s and relatively recently, that have deteriorated plastic headlights is absolutely outrageous. Forcing people into the retrofits, and the aftermarket.

 

[dogememe]

Yeah... I've had a couple older trucks with sealed beam headlights and night visibility was always great.

I put aftermarket plug-and-play LED headlights in my Escape and I've done some testing... Oncoming glare is minimal while visibility is much better, but still has room for improvement.

I'm trying to decide what path to go for on my Suburban... I've heard replacing the 9006 and 9005 bulbs with 9012 and 9011 bulbs respectively makes a difference but I've read the 9012 bulbs cause glare so I don't want that.

 

[Lolvoguy]

Originally Posted by aquariuscsm
I really wish they'd bring back glass and get rid of all this plastic garbage.

I agree. Especially considering how expensive the headlight assemblies are!

 

[xxch4osxx]

Originally Posted by Colt45ws
Never seen tinted front windows. Sometimes a 3" strip across the top?

I was thinking the same thing. Never heard of tinting the whole windshield.

 

[Kestas]

Originally Posted by Colt45ws
Never seen tinted front windows. Sometimes a 3" strip across the top?

Yes, front windshields are tinted. This is one of those things that is so subtle and we've been conditioned to it for so long that we don't notice it. What you have to do is get out of the car and look through the windows. Then you'll see the tint.

This is one of the points brought up in Ralph Nader's book, "Unsafe at any Speed."

The tinting is marketed at keeping the car cool and to reduce glare. But there is no such thing as reducing glare. It reduces total light, exactly the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish with brighter headlamps. The irony from this circle of logic is obvious.

 

[jeff78]

Originally Posted by Kestas
The tinting is marketed at keeping the car cool and to reduce glare. But there is no such thing as reducing glare. It reduces total light, exactly the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish with brighter headlamps. The irony from this circle of logic is obvious.


I imagine some sort of electronically controlled 'active tinting' in the windshield would be a good solution (remember Knight Rider?) - have some degree of tint in daylight, then switching to completely clear at night. Maybe even 'active matrix' tinting where at night, glare from oncoming headlights is reduced by dynamic 'patches' of tint leaving the rest of the windshield clear.

But then people will complain about having to pay $20k to replace the windshield when it gets smacked by a rock so this is probably never gonna happen.

 

[Kestas]

Just wear a cheap pair of sunglasses in the daytime. Problem solved.

 

[SubLGT]

Good IIHS headlight ratings linked to lower crash rates

Headlight improvements encouraged by the Institute’s ratings program are reducing crashes in the real world, a new study shows.

www.iihs.org

some excerpts from the above article:

The headlight ratings program developed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is reducing dangerous nighttime crashes in the real world, a recent study shows.

Nighttime crash rates per mile are nearly 20 percent lower for vehicles with headlights that earn a good rating in the IIHS evaluation, compared with those with poor-rated headlights, the study found. For vehicles with acceptable or marginal headlights, crash rates are 15 percent and 10 percent lower than for those with poor ratings.

“Driving at night is 3 times as risky as driving during the day,” says IIHS Senior Research Engineer Matthew Brumbelow, who conducted the study. “This is the first study to document how much headlights that provide better illumination can help.”

Those reductions make clear that federal headlight regulations, which have not changed significantly since 1968, are not stringent enough. The federal standard specifies minimum and maximum brightness levels for headlights at various angles. However, it focuses on the headlight itself, without considering how well it is aimed once it is installed on a particular vehicle or how newer technologies such as curve-adaptive headlights may change that orientation when the vehicle is moving.

Though Brumbelow did not consider excessive glare in his analysis, measuring glare to oncoming drivers is also an important part of IIHS evaluations. Here, too, the ratings have driven improvements. In 2016, the headlight systems rated by IIHS emitted 15 percent more glare on average than the level IIHS determined to be acceptable. In 2020, average glare was 10 percent below that threshold.

By.....making high-quality headlights a requirement for the TOP SAFETY PICKand TOP SAFETY PICK+ awards, IIHS has given manufacturers an incentive to make better headlights available on more vehicles.

Automakers have made midyear design changes to nearly 200 headlight systems in the quest for one of the two [IIHS Safety] awards. Genesis went as far as to undertake a service campaign to make free, retroactive adjustments for buyers of the 2021 Genesis G80 to make sure it qualified for the highest accolade.

“Our awards have been a huge motivator for automakers to improve their headlights,” Brumbelow says. “Now, with our new study, we have confirmation that these improvements are saving lives.”