UPDATE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated General Motors was not part of the group pushing the NHTSA to update the FMVSS to include new headlight technology. GM has in fact submitted comments to the NHTSA in support of changing the FMVSS. We’ve updated the story accordingly. We apologizes for the error.
Nighttime driving is the most dangerous kind of driving not only for drivers, but also for pedestrians. Not helping matters is that low-beam headlights on current vehicles often fail to provide sufficient illumination at night, making driving even worse. What’s upsetting is that the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), governed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are not only insufficient when it comes to new headlight technology, but are very much outdated to the point of holding back modern lighting technologies from becoming available to motorists in the U.S.
First, let’s review what the FMVSS is limiting automakers to doing in the United States. The state of the art of U.S. motor vehicle standards culminates in automatic high-beam headlights, which automatically turn on the high beams, and then automatically turn them off when an oncoming vehicle is detected, only turning them back on when that vehicle has gone outside the lit area. General Motors offers this technology under the IntelliBeam brand.
By comparison, automakers in Europe and Canada can equip their vehicles with a newer and more effective technology called Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlights. ADB is a progression of automatic high-beam headlights, but works in a completely different way. Instead, ADB headlights keep a vehicle’s high beams turned on all the time. When an oncoming vehicle is detected, the system shades the appropriate area of the headlight to prevent glare that could interfere with the vision of the other driver. It’s the best of both worlds, delivering increased illumination at night without interfering with the oncoming driver.
The lack of progress in updating the FMVSS has rallied some organizations such as Toyota and AAA to petition the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to change the standards to allow vehicles with ADB headlights to be sold in the U.S.
While Toyota and AAA have petitioned the NHSTA to update the FMVSS for better headlights, any changes could still be years away. Better headlights and new technologies are essential to vehicle safety, and this most certainly should be a priority for both the NHSTA and automakers. General Motors has submitted comments to the NHSTA in support of changing the FMVSS, which you can read here.
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Source: Ford Authority
Comments
One would think that vehicle headlights shouldn’t be determined by shape as much as the number of lumens of brightness that the headlights project meaning 700 lumens for low beam and 1200 for high beam.
Who said anything about headlight shape?
Misconceptions like focusing on the number of lumens are what’s holding back America’s headlight laws. An uninformed public cannot influence the regulatory bodies with misinformation.
Does anyone know of a vehicle sold in Canada with superior headlights than the same model sold in the USA?
Most of the Audi lineup, for starters.
The problem is more complex than that, however. Automakers who do have ADB headlight systems in their lineups could simply be holding off on offering them across any North American market, including Canada. Once the U.S. jumps on board, Canada (and Mexico) should get the better lights, too.
Very good point, Alex! Thank you.
Can’t automakers just increase the brightness of the low beams? Or what about a system that only turns off the drivers side high beam? there has to be loop-holes.
No, we can’t increase “brightness” and expect huge gains because low beams are by law and engineering aimed downward slightly. Most low beams are supposed to be aimed about 0.25 degrees downward. This is to protect oncoming drivers from glare. Driving with only low beams in the dark is only safe up to 45 MPH, max. Any more than that and you will not have time to react to a threat. This is simple physics.
Imagine holding a cheap dollar store flashlight with it pointed at the ground. Now imagine holding a 5000 dollar 2 million lumen flashlight pointed at the ground. You won’t see further with the brighter flashlight because they’re both pointed at the ground. It’s not about “brightness” it’s about the aim angle.
Adaptive high beams solve this issue because they’re no longer subject to a fixed aim angle. They can adjust the beam on the fly to shade areas where oncoming driver’s eyes are.
There are definitely headlights that can benefit from upgrading the bulbs, even if the low beam pattern isn’t changed. I swear some halogen bulbs are more dim than they were a decade ago. Some of the higher output incandescent bulbs can boost the light output, but bulb life is greatly below average.
The design of the headlight is a limiting factor. If you have a projector beam, usually no problem. If you have an open reflector, installing a HID or some LEDs can blind oncoming drivers even on low beam.
Real improvement across the board isn’t happening until regulations allow it.
Changing a bulb for a higher output version doesn’t change the geometric limitation of a low beam. If you’re trying to light up a spot on a hill 500 feet away from you with your flashlight that’s currently pointed slightly downward, do you:
A) replace the flashlight bulb with one that puts out 500 more lumens
Or
B) point the flashlight up?
Also, the notion that you can plug HIDs in any old projector housing and not glare other drivers is complete BS. Yes, in general, projectors are better at controlling glare than reflectors, but putting an HID in a projector designed for a halogen bulb will screw things up. The projector is designed to focus light from a very specific point: a halogen filament at a precise location with exactly one hotspot. A HID bulb creates an arc, not a straight line like a filament, and there are two hotspots, one at the end of each arc. Neither hotspot will be correctly focused, and you’ll likely be busting through the glare point candela values as a result.
America may have been at the forefront of setting safety standards but because the wearing of seatbelts was enforced by the States, these Federal standards “had” to assume that the passengers were not belted. As far as I know, all safety standards in the rest of the world are predicated that seatbelts are worn and that the progression of crush resistance is tailored accordingly.
The need to harmonize the best safety standards around the world is paramount and until this is done we North Americans are not getting the best protection that is available. The same thinking applies to lighting. Unfortunately politicians are not engineers, they are usually lawyers.
There’s a lot of boneheadedness to go around in the world. European regulations don’t require side marker lights for most cars, increasing the risk of a side collision. Americans don’t require amber turn signals, increasing rear enders. European low beam regulations severely limit seeing distance. European high beam regulations permit much better high beams than the best ones found in the US.
I wish they would get this sorted out. All the folks putting in LED lights in standard housings are blinding so many other drivers because the lens is not optimized for the bulbs they put in.
Some of the HID guys were melting lenses.
Two comments:
1. I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee with automatic high-beams. The system absolutely stinks. It’s performance is laughable to the point that it has become more of a detriment then a useful feature. I ultimately turned that feature off (thank god that FCA gives one the option to do so).
2. If we’re talking about changing standards, how about doing something about plastic lenses that cloud over as they age? Talk about insufficient illumination! All the technology in the world won’t help if the lens is not allowing the light out of the headlight assembly.
Since back in the 60s the auto high beams have been almost useless. The systems used a simple photocell to measure oncoming lights.
The owner’s manual for my ’19 Equinox claims that GM uses a camera based system to analyze light patterns. All I know is that on the dark rural Arizona roads the system has worked great and faster than I can dim the lights.
Remember that the good ol’ USA was the last to give up on the standardized sealed beam lights.
Hela used to sell “halogen conversion” units where on replaced the sealed beams with replaceable bulb units. In my 79 9C1 Impala I replaced the 4 standard lamps with the Helas. The outboards were low/high units (55 and 80 watts) whilst the inboards were high only. (100 watts). The lens fluting made the low beams feature a wider even beam with a distinctive cutoff to avoid the glare to on coming drivers, along with a pattern that lit up the right shoulder farther that the pavement.
These lights were far superior to OEM units of any brand. They carried a sticker saying “For off-road use only.”
US auto lighting rules and many other areas of US safety standards have been woefully behind the UN-ECE rules used in Europe for more than 50 years. Scrapping the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) entirely and adopting the UN-ECE standards would be a very good move for the USA. But too many cushy jobs in DC would be lost. So how about a compromise. Allow new vehicles meeting either the inferior FMVSS standards or the UN-ECE standards to be sold.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
And this is the kind of BS that hampers effective regulation of lighting in the US. US low beams are typically better at guaranteeing a longer sight distance than ECE low beams. US high beams are subject to a 75,000 candela limit while ECE caps it at a far more reasonable 145,000 candela. The US doesn’t require amber turn signals, but the ECE does, but has lax effective projected luminous area regulations, so in some cases, you can barely see an ECE turn signal in the day. Side markers are required here, which is good, but not in ECE Nations for most cars.
Do the ADB systems account for vehicles in front of me? Or do they blast the bright lights into that vehicles rear view mirror?
It’s a smart system, so it compensates for vehicles ahead of the vehicle with ADB as well as for oncoming vehicles. It works really well and you really have to feel it to experience it.
I agree that the regulations regarding plastic lens degradation need to change. Currently, the plastic lens simply need to survive 3 years in the Florida and Arizona sun. There’s also no provision for accelerated lifecycle testing in the US…so if you discover a miracle plastic material for headlights that never degrades, you can’t even use it until at least 3 years later, because the tests to prove compliance with FMVSS literally takes 3 years. And in those 3 years, millions of cars with ordinary plastic lamps will have been sold. Europe is far ahead by allowing accelerated lifecycle testing.
To double the lifespan of a headlamp lens would cost an additional 1% of lamp development costs. The materials to make lamps last a very long time exist. But manufacturers don’t wanna use them for obvious reasons.
I went to a conference a few years ago and the most interesting presentation was one that put an actual number on how many American lives are lost every year due to degraded lamps. That number was in the 1000s.
The good news is that newer lamps with LED technology can worry less about degradation. LEDs create less heat than traditional halogen bulbs and send the heat out the back, rather than in the same direction as the light. This will greatly retard the degradation of the polycarbonate lens. UV degradation of the lens, however, remains an issue. I would recommend that all car owners apply a layer of wax to their lens, as UV degradation requires oxygen. The photolysis of the polycarbonate creates radicals, which scavenge electrons from oxygen to create highly reactive radical oxygen species. A layer of wax may serve as a protective oxygen barrier. HALs in the hardcoat can serve to terminate the chemical degradation reactions, but these will eventually be depleted.
I drive a lot at night and am constantly blinded by headlight glare from other cars. While I am all for BRIGHTER LED and HID headlights, something needs to be done about the glare!! Aim the headlights down a bit more, incorporate an auto dimming feature so it dims the headlights in well lit areas…. we do not need 100,000 cd bright lights in a well lit area with LED street lights that are already too bright. Re-design the reflector based housings to have a better glare shield, the reflector based housings are the worst, they produce a lot of light glare. Projector style housings are better, but so bright!! I have been trying to contact the NHTSA and am constantly getting sent elsewhere… after doing some research it seems other people feel the same way I do and there are things happening to make the situation better. I just wish I could work with lighting engineers to make better/safer headlights. It would be nice to bring back headlight safety checks like they had back in the 70’s and maybe the 80’s… not sure… but a checking station much like an emissions station. A place where you had to go to get your headlights checked to make sure they comply and are in proper working order. There is much more I could say, but this is good for now