- 11 hours ago
إذا كنت قد قدت سيارتك ليلاً في الآونة الأخيرة، فمن المحتمل أنك وجهت بعض العبارات النابية -التي لا تليق بالذكر- نحو سيارة قادمة في الاتجاه المعاكس، تبدو وكأنها تحمل كشافات ملعب رياضي متنقلة! وقد تنبه المشرعون في كندا والولايات المتحدة إلى حالة الاستياء العام هذه، وبدأوا يطالبون بوضع ضوابط للحد من حدة أضواء السيارات الحديثة.
ووفقاً لصحيفة "ناشونال بوست" (National Post)، فقد قدم شون أور، عضو مجلس مدينة فانكوفر، مقترحاً لمعالجة شكاوى السائقين الذين يشعرون بالانبهار البصري (التعرض لضوء ساطع مفاجئ) أو التشتت، لدرجة أن بعضهم قد يتخيل للحظة أنه يتعرض للاختطاف من قبل كائنات فضائية أثناء القيادة ليلاً! وفي الولايات المتحدة، أثارت النائبة ماري غلوسينكامب بيريز مخاوف مماثلة في العام الماضي.
وخلاصة المطلب بسيطة: تقليل الوهج الصادر عن مصابيح "LED" الحديثة -التي تعد أكثر سطوعاً من مصابيح "HID" السابقة، وتختلف اختلافاً جذرياً عن المصابيح التقليدية القديمة- لجعل القيادة ليلاً تجربة أقل إرهاقاً للعين، بدلاً من أن تبدو وكأن السائق يحدق مباشرة في الشمس.
لكن هنا تكمن التعقيدات؛ فالوهج لا يعتمد فقط على درجة السطوع، بل ينتج عن تشتت الضوء ودخوله إلى العين. ومن ناحية أخرى، قام خبراء السلامة في "معهد التأمين للسلامة على الطرق السريعة" (IIHS) بتحليل بيانات الحوادث الواقعية، ووجدوا أن الوهج الناتج عن المصابيح الأمامية لا يرتبط إلا بجزء ضئيل جداً من الحوادث التي تقع ليلاً.
ووفقاً لصحيفة "ناشونال بوست" (National Post)، فقد قدم شون أور، عضو مجلس مدينة فانكوفر، مقترحاً لمعالجة شكاوى السائقين الذين يشعرون بالانبهار البصري (التعرض لضوء ساطع مفاجئ) أو التشتت، لدرجة أن بعضهم قد يتخيل للحظة أنه يتعرض للاختطاف من قبل كائنات فضائية أثناء القيادة ليلاً! وفي الولايات المتحدة، أثارت النائبة ماري غلوسينكامب بيريز مخاوف مماثلة في العام الماضي.
وخلاصة المطلب بسيطة: تقليل الوهج الصادر عن مصابيح "LED" الحديثة -التي تعد أكثر سطوعاً من مصابيح "HID" السابقة، وتختلف اختلافاً جذرياً عن المصابيح التقليدية القديمة- لجعل القيادة ليلاً تجربة أقل إرهاقاً للعين، بدلاً من أن تبدو وكأن السائق يحدق مباشرة في الشمس.
لكن هنا تكمن التعقيدات؛ فالوهج لا يعتمد فقط على درجة السطوع، بل ينتج عن تشتت الضوء ودخوله إلى العين. ومن ناحية أخرى، قام خبراء السلامة في "معهد التأمين للسلامة على الطرق السريعة" (IIHS) بتحليل بيانات الحوادث الواقعية، ووجدوا أن الوهج الناتج عن المصابيح الأمامية لا يرتبط إلا بجزء ضئيل جداً من الحوادث التي تقع ليلاً.
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MotorTranscript
00:00Hey everybody, thanks so much for tuning in today.
00:02I'm Joe Young here at IHS and I have Matt Brumelow, our Principal Research Engineer,
00:06here at the Institute to talk through some really exciting new research looking at headlight glare.
00:11Before we jump in, if you like this kind of content, don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow
00:15so you never miss this type of video as well as some of our crash tests and other research coming
00:20out of the Institute.
00:20So Matt, thanks for spending some time with me today.
00:23Really excited to talk about your new study which looked at headlight glare.
00:26Before we jump into that, can you just tell us a little bit about what you do here at the
00:30Institute?
00:31Sure, yeah.
00:32So I'm a research engineer, which means that I take data that we're collecting in our crash tests
00:37and try to correlate that to what's happening in the field, so in real-world crashes.
00:43And a lot of my research has looked at different crash modes
00:47and how the things we're measuring on our dummies or on the vehicle
00:52predict or don't predict what's happening when we look at field crash data.
00:57But a part of that, about 10 years ago, we started looking into nighttime crashes
01:03and trying to understand how headlight performance and design might affect outcomes in those field crashes.
01:09Yeah, so I know we've been focused on headlights a lot.
01:11Over the last decade, we launched our Headlight Ratings Program in 2016,
01:14which we're going to talk about a little bit during this discussion.
01:17But your most recent look was specifically at headlight glare.
01:21From a social media standpoint, we get questions about headlight glare a lot,
01:24and especially recently, it seems like it's something that's bothering people out there on the road.
01:29And so that kind of prompted you to look into whether it's actually causing more crashes.
01:33Is that right?
01:34Yeah, that's right.
01:35And it is a big part of our ratings.
01:37As you said, we've been rating headlights since 2016, and there's two pieces to that.
01:42There's really, because there's two pieces to how you design a good headlight.
01:46You need to get enough light on the road for the driver of the vehicle,
01:49but not at the expense of glaring everybody else.
01:52And so both of those go into our rating.
01:55And we had previously been able to study the first part, the visibility part,
01:59and show that better ratings in our tests meant fewer crashes for the drivers of those vehicles.
02:05What's harder to study, and what I tried to do in this study, was look at the other end.
02:11Is that coming at the expense of more crashes for other road users?
02:15So talk to me really quickly about challenges with studying glare out there looking at real-world crashes.
02:22Right.
02:23So it might be easy to talk about the contrast if we're looking at visibility.
02:27We know the vehicle that's involved in the crash and what we measured on our track for the headlight performance
02:34of that vehicle,
02:35so it's really easy to correlate that.
02:37If you're, though, out on the road and you experience glare from another vehicle,
02:42if that vehicle doesn't hit you or you don't hit it, you're never going to know what caused the glare.
02:48And so that's the challenge here was if a crash occurs because of glare,
02:54we never really know what vehicle or multiple vehicles caused it, if the high beams were on or the low
03:01beams.
03:02And so that kind of made it so we had to use a different approach for this study.
03:06So tell me about that approach.
03:08So you looked at crash reports, is that right, as opposed to looking at just the raw data
03:13and associating with the vehicle model and so forth?
03:16That's right.
03:17So there are every state has its own data collection process for crashes,
03:22which sometimes is a headache for researchers.
03:25But in other instances like this, it actually provides more information because we can go into those states
03:32and see which ones are recording these different contributing factors.
03:37And so I identified 11 different states that have on somewhere in the police crash report form
03:45the opportunity for the officers to say that, yes, glare contributed to this crash.
03:51And sometimes that's glare from the sun, sometimes that's glare from headlights.
03:55So I had to further narrow it down to crashes that happened when it was dark outside.
04:00And then I could look at the rate of that happening over time.
04:04So it's not, I kind of have referred to this as squishy data because it's someone had to report
04:11that they were affected by glare for it to get in into the crash report.
04:15But by looking at 11 different states over eight or nine different years,
04:20we could see the very consistent kind of trends that were there that gave us some confidence that this was
04:26real.
04:26All right.
04:27So how many crash reports are we talking about in total of these 11 states?
04:32And what was the time frame you looked at for this?
04:36Yeah.
04:36So the study was really focused on when we launched our headlight rating program, which was 2016,
04:42up until the latest data I could get.
04:45So there's one or two states we had 2024 data, but most of that was cut off at 2023 to
04:51this point.
04:51And including the daytime and nighttime crashes, there were over 20 million crashes.
04:57And then specifically at night, there were 6 million.
05:00So when we were looking at the headlight, potential for headlight glare,
05:04we had 6 million data points to kind of evaluate how many of those were affected by glare.
05:10All right.
05:11So what was kind of the big takeaway?
05:13The big takeaway was that across the 11 states and across all of those years,
05:18there's a very consistent rate of around one to two of every thousand nighttime crashes
05:24where the officer recorded on the form that, yes, glare contributed to this.
05:30And so the fact that it was consistent across the states within that pretty narrow range of 0.1%
05:37to 0.2%
05:38and also from one year to the next was, you know, building the confidence that this is pretty,
05:44probably pretty accurate, at least for the kind of crashes that a driver could report that this was a factor.
05:52So I think we can all agree, you know, your study looks, it looks like headlight glare is not necessarily
06:00changing over time
06:01in terms of crash rates anyway, but I think we can all agree that it still can be dangerous.
06:05Obviously, it's still distracting at times.
06:08Are there other studies out there that have looked at glare and its role in crashes
06:13or anything that we can say about how drivers tend to respond to glare?
06:16Yeah, most of the studies that have been done before on glare involve, you know,
06:22very controlled kind of laboratory conditions or a driver in a test vehicle may be out on the road,
06:29but they're measuring, you know, how they respond to different glare inputs.
06:34And so we do know that there's glare that can be a distraction,
06:39and then at some point that transitions into disability glare.
06:43it's referred to where your visual performance actually is affected
06:47by the amount of glare that you're experiencing.
06:51And so that threshold is probably different for everybody.
06:54It changes as you age.
06:56You know, there are a lot of other factors that go into it.
06:58And so it is a problem.
07:01That's why we measure it in our tests.
07:03But in terms of the size of the problem relative to insufficient visibility,
07:10it's a, it's a much smaller piece of the risk of crashing at night.
07:14All right.
07:15So you mentioned our tests, and I want to talk a little bit more about how we evaluate vehicles
07:19for headlights here at IHS.
07:21But before we do, let's set the stage.
07:23Can you talk us a little bit about the regulatory framework around headlights in this country
07:28and whether that's changed in recent years or decades?
07:32Sure.
07:32So the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration writes the regulations for vehicle performance,
07:40and they have Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, or FMVSSs,
07:45that govern certain parts of vehicle performance.
07:48And so the one over headlights is FMVSS 108.
07:53It's hundreds of pages of very arcane language.
07:57I'm not sure if I would recommend going and reading it because it's, I've tried.
08:01It's a slog.
08:02It's a slog.
08:03And so there have been different tweaks over the years, but the biggest kind of piece of
08:11how visibility and glare are related hasn't fundamentally changed since at least the late 1990s.
08:20And even then, you could argue it wasn't a huge shift.
08:23And so the way that the headlights are certified to pass the regulation is very different from
08:31how we're testing them on the vehicle on our track.
08:34So it's literally just the lamp itself on a test fixture with sensors around to measure the light
08:41that's coming out at different angles to make sure that the light that's coming out at an angle
08:46that should hit the road is bright enough.
08:48and where it's going to hit your eyes, the eyes of somebody else is not too bright.
08:55The problem, well, there's several problems, but a big one is then that headlight gets slapped
08:59on a vehicle in the production line and it could be aimed differently.
09:04It could be at a different height or a different spread.
09:07So there's no real control on how the standard predicts the field's performance of a headlight.
09:14And so that's why essentially we started doing our test.
09:17Right. So you went out there, you looked at the real world data and saw that obviously nighttime crashes are
09:22a problem.
09:23I think it's, what, about half of all crash fatalities occur at night, despite the fact that most driving does
09:29occur in the day.
09:29That's right. Yeah, it's hard to get miles per kind of exposure, that exposure variable.
09:37But the estimates I've seen are maybe a quarter to a third of the driving is at night.
09:41So definitely overrepresented for fatal crashes.
09:45Right. And so you and the team here at IHS about a decade ago came together and said,
09:49we need to develop a ratings program.
09:51So you were involved in the actual design of the headlight test program.
09:54That's right.
09:55Can you talk to us just about what that looks like for our test drivers?
09:58What's involved with the actual test that we've been running now since 2016?
10:02On our test track, we set up different approaches.
10:05So the test vehicle is being driven on the track and there are sensors set up on the track to
10:12measure the visibility light.
10:13So those are pretty close to the ground.
10:16And then there are sensors to set up to measure the glare light.
10:19So they're at the eye height of an oncoming driver.
10:22And then the test vehicle comes in either on a straightaway and then we have two right curves and two
10:28left curves.
10:29And we're testing high beams and low beams.
10:32And so all of that data gets gets recorded and measured against kind of the criteria that we've set for
10:40what a good headlight should be.
10:42So it's it's a lot of work for our team here.
10:45They're they're here a lot of nights of the year testing very late.
10:50But it gets really this unique set of performance data for headlights that you can't get anywhere else.
10:57And the glare readings we're looking at, of course, for low beams.
11:00But for high beams, we're not concerned about glare because typically you wouldn't be, you know, using your high beams
11:04in that scenario.
11:05The glare limits are only for the low beams.
11:07And then also you can get extra credit for something we call high beam assist, right?
11:11Can you tell us what that technology is?
11:12Sure.
11:13A lot of new vehicles have this now.
11:15And a big part of that is because our test does have incentive for that.
11:19But it uses a usually it's a camera or a light sensor behind the rearview mirror so it can detect
11:26oncoming vehicles and automatically adjust between the high beams and the low beams depending on if there are other vehicles
11:34around.
11:35And so we wanted to really encourage that because there's we had partnered with University of Michigan to do a
11:42study that found even in rural isolated driving, no other vehicles around, less than one in five drivers were using
11:50their high beams.
11:51And so we know that that's going to affect crash risk.
11:54And we wanted to encourage that technology.
11:56Matt, let's talk just quickly about headlight height because, you know, we've got different vehicles out on the road, minivans,
12:02SUVs, small cars.
12:04And their headlights are at different heights.
12:05How does that affect their performance in terms of glare?
12:08Right.
12:08So in the regulation, it has no effect.
12:11So because the regulation is only testing the headlight itself, it doesn't matter where it's going to be put on
12:17the vehicle.
12:18And it can, you know, pass the test and be put on a sports car really low to the ground
12:24or on a pickup really, really high from the ground.
12:27So that's another benefit of our test is that we're testing all these vehicles the same.
12:32We chose the eye height, you know, where our glare stands are based on a midsize car.
12:38And so everything has to do well with essentially a midsize car target as the oncoming vehicle.
12:45So that's basically the eyes of someone sitting in a midsize car.
12:48That's what we're looking at for glare.
12:49Exactly.
12:50So we have seen design changes that I'm sure are at least partly inspired by our test where headlights are
12:57now being put lower down on the vehicle,
13:00which makes a lot of sense because it gives a much bigger buffer between getting the light on the road
13:05versus causing glare to somebody else.
13:07This might go without saying, but you need headlights at night and you need good headlights at night.
13:13Why are brighter headlights like the ones being prompted by our ratings program so important for safety at night?
13:22Yeah.
13:23So, again, for our rating where we're measuring both visibility and glare and a headlight has to do both.
13:29But in terms of you driving your own vehicle, the best situation would be as much light as possible, right?
13:36High beams all the time and even stronger high beams on certain roads are going to allow you to see
13:44an obstacle
13:45or whether that's a deer or a pedestrian or a vehicle that's disabled in your lane or whatever in time
13:53to brake or steer and avoid the crash.
13:57And so there's a lot of research out there actually showing that people regularly overdrive their headlights,
14:03which means they're driving faster than the amount of light that they have would allow them to see something and
14:10stop in time.
14:11And so it's, again, a perception thing.
14:14If, you know, I'm driving at night and I hit a deer, I may never think about, well, what if
14:20my headlights were brighter?
14:21Maybe I would have seen the deer in time.
14:22To me, it just ran out in front of me and I hit it.
14:25But what that means was by the time I saw it, it was too late to do anything.
14:30Or the same with, you know, another obstacle that you might run into.
14:34So it's not something that, again, think of a police crash report.
14:38Probably nobody's out there saying, well, my headlights weren't bright enough, so I ran into the tree, you know,
14:43because I went off the edge of the road because they don't think, well, how, you know,
14:47this is a curvy road and I was driving too fast and my headlights aren't bright enough.
14:51Those things just, we don't think about them.
14:53And I think that kind of speaks to the fact that people might not even realize there's such a variation
14:57in headlight performance if you go out and buy a vehicle.
15:00That's right.
15:01I think the assumption could be, well, the regulation is harmonizing everything.
15:06And that was kind of my assumption until we started measuring these on our track and seeing a wide range
15:11of performance.
15:12What we're going for is to have, again, high beams on as much as possible when there are not other
15:19road users that you're going to glare.
15:21But then when you have to use your low beams that you're still getting enough visibility to see and avoid
15:27a crash at a safe speed that you should be driving.
15:30I don't know if you can answer this question easily, but with a vehicle that maybe gets a poor rating
15:35because of visibility in our tests, how fast can you safely drive?
15:40I mean, is it like you've only got this much stopping distance or what is it?
15:45There's a wide range of pours and some of, but we have done the math.
15:49And in certain cases it's for, and it depends on the obstacle, how reflective it is, how big it is
15:56to get you time to stop.
15:58But in some cases it's, you shouldn't be driving faster than like 35 miles an hour.
16:02And so on a dark, you know, unlit road in the country, very few people are going to drive that
16:08slow.
16:09And, but again, they won't know that this is really as far as I can see.
16:14That's kind of scary to think about.
16:17Wow.
16:18All right.
16:18Well, yeah.
16:19And so, you know, looking at ratings over time, of course, we've seen dramatic improvements since we launched the ratings
16:24program in 2016.
16:25We rate vehicles on what we call our GAMP scale, good, acceptable, marginal, poor, same as with our crash tests.
16:32So back to 2016, how were vehicles performing and what sort of improvements have we seen?
16:39We've seen huge improvements, both in terms of the visibility and the glare components of those ratings.
16:46And when you put them together, our initial round of tests, we had one good performer out of, I think,
16:53somewhere between 70, 80 different headlight systems.
16:592017 model year, we had, you know, built up, but I think it was still only about 10% were
17:05good.
17:05Whereas today we have, if you count, I think it was the 2025 model year, we had about 50%
17:12of the vehicles were rated good.
17:14And so, again, that's coming from better visibility.
17:17But also, when we first started, we were seeing lots of vehicles that had way too much glare, in some
17:24cases, almost as much as you'd get from a high beam.
17:27And that number has fallen dramatically as well to today.
17:32There's very few vehicles that have the excessive glare downgrade, which would take you all the way to marginal if
17:38you had good visibility otherwise.
17:40Right. So a vehicle cannot score an acceptable or higher with that excessive glare.
17:44That's the automatic marginal rating.
17:46And, you know, I think it's worth just pointing out at this point, if viewers are interested in checking headlight
17:51ratings, you know, a given model might have multiple headlight ratings.
17:54Can you speak to that?
17:56Sure, yeah.
17:57And that was especially true when we first started.
18:00There was often, for any vehicle, kind of the base headlight option, which was often the cheapest, you know, a
18:07halogen bulb with what we call a reflector-type headlamp.
18:11So it's kind of, as you picture, like the chrome facets behind the bulb that are reflecting the light forward.
18:17And then there was oftentimes a higher end, higher trim option that might have been HID or LED.
18:25And then often with a projector lens in front of it that helps spread the light out more.
18:30But because of our tests, a lot of those cheaper options have gone away.
18:36And it's not necessarily driven up costs because the LED efficiency and cost has come down.
18:43And so we see now today there are still vehicles where you'd have to check which trim am I getting.
18:50But with the newest vehicles, there's a lot more where you're just getting one headlight, and it's the best one
18:56they could design for that vehicle.
18:57Yeah, and I'll say that our top safety pick award criteria, which have shifted over years, have surely encouraged that
19:03by requiring good or acceptable standard headlights so that people don't have to do a lot of shopping around to
19:08find those lights.
19:09So you mentioned LED and HID headlights.
19:12I think it's important that we talk about some headlight technologies, as well as getting your take on what we've
19:19seen automakers gravitating towards.
19:21So can you briefly just tell us kind of what we're looking at in terms of headlight technology in 2025?
19:28Sure, yeah, most vehicles today, if they're at least a new design of a headlight, are coming with LED headlights
19:37as the light source.
19:38And that wasn't true when we started.
19:40Most vehicles were a halogen light source.
19:43So the halogen is a filament that has to get, well, current's passing through it, but it's producing a lot
19:51of heat.
19:52So maybe more heat than light, it's not very efficient, but it was cheap, and it's what kind of most
19:59vehicles were equipped with.
20:02Again, over time, partly because of our tests, but partly just the improvements in the technology, LEDs have kind of
20:09taken over because they are a lot cheaper to make now, and they're much more efficient.
20:14They don't produce as much heat as a halogen, and they last a lot longer, and so most new vehicles
20:21come with LEDs.
20:23But our tests don't specifically call for any one technology, and I think halogens have performed well in our tests,
20:29but as you mentioned, we're seeing a lot of LEDs lately.
20:32So it's been now, I guess, eight, nine years since we started evaluating headlights, and as you engineers like to
20:39do,
20:39you then went and looked at the real-world data a couple years ago to figure out, hey, is this
20:43making a difference, right?
20:45What did you find when you looked at the real-world data there?
20:48Yeah, so that was the study where we were looking at visibility, just the visibility component of our rating,
20:55and I found that vehicles that had good rated visibility were involved in 19% fewer crashes, nighttime single-vehicle
21:05crashes per mile, than those with poor visibility.
21:08So we knew at that point that getting more light on the track on our test is corresponding to better
21:18field outcomes, fewer crashes at night.
21:21Again, the missing piece, and we got a lot of questions in, was, well, what about glare?
21:25And so that's why I did this study, was to try and answer that question.
21:29And I think, you know, I'm going to predict some questions that are coming in right now from people that
21:33may be driving older vehicles with halogen lights that maybe aren't lighting the road.
21:37Hey, can I upgrade to aftermarket LED headlights?
21:40Is that an option to improve headlight performance?
21:43I know you've gotten that question before.
21:44What's your response?
21:46Yeah, it depends what you mean by is it an option, because you can go on Amazon and buy LED
21:51replacement bulbs.
21:52But those are actually all illegal, because they have, unless it was, you're putting it in a vehicle that was
22:00designed for an LED bulb.
22:02There's many other pieces of the design of the headlight that go into the assumption that I'm going to have
22:09a halogen filament at this location to get the light in the right places.
22:14So replacing that with an LED that's much brighter and the light source is at a different location can improve
22:23performance.
22:23It can also make it worse, and it often makes glare much worse.
22:27And so people with the older halogen headlamps, you can replace the halogen bulbs and see a difference oftentimes, because
22:37they can, you know, kind of build up.
22:39It looks almost like corrosion on the outside, and you can also get the lenses resurfaced.
22:44If they're hazy, you know, that's something that people might want to look into as well.
22:49Are there other things that are happening in the real world, like aftermarket LED headlights, that could be affecting the
22:55amount of glare that people are seeing out there?
22:57Absolutely, and this is an area where I'd love to be able to do a study.
23:03I haven't been able to yet, but I think there are a lot of factors just from my own perception,
23:09and I know I'm not like the typical, probably, person driving around looking at other people's headlights.
23:15But there's an abnormally high number of times where I feel glared by a vehicle, and I can tell those
23:22are aftermarket LEDs on a vehicle that wasn't designed for those headlights.
23:27And so those are, not technically, they are illegal, but it's not really enforced on the state level commonly.
23:35In different states, they have laws that when you get your state inspection, you're supposed to be failed if you
23:42have aftermarket headlights.
23:44I have no idea how often that's happening.
23:47But another common thing would be, like, lift kits on a pickup or work lights that people put on their
23:55vehicles and drive around with turned on, that if you go on Amazon to buy these, it will say for
24:00off-road use only.
24:01But nobody, again, that I'm aware of is really enforcing that, and so I think that is a part of
24:07what we're experiencing, but it's a part that's really hard for us to measure right now.
24:12So let's look ahead a little bit at another headlight technology, adaptive driving beam technology.
24:18So this is an area where we have seen some slight shift in the regulation in recent years, right?
24:24Can you tell us what that technology is and the regulatory situation there?
24:28That's right.
24:28So adaptive driving beams are kind of taking technology that has been in place with high beam assist but also
24:37for, you know, other crash prevention systems that are using cameras.
24:42And the system can use the camera information to track exactly where other vehicles are kind of in the field
24:52of view relative to the vehicle with the technology.
24:55And then with the right headlight technology, you can dim out the portions of the high beam that are pointed
25:03at those other vehicles, and this is all happening dynamically.
25:07So as you're driving, you can picture, like, the angle to the other vehicles constantly changing, but the headlight can
25:14dim out fast enough to keep up with that.
25:16And so it's really cool technology, it's been around for a long time in other countries, a lot of European
25:23vehicles have had them for quite a while, but it wasn't allowed under our regulatory kind of framework.
25:31And so there was a long rulemaking process, NHTSA did eventually kind of re- kind of shift the standard
25:40to allow them.
25:42The problem, from my perspective, is the way it was kind of shoehorned into the existing kind of setup of
25:50looking at different angles and brightness levels instead of treating it as a brand new kind of technology.
25:56And so what that means is that it's been very hard for manufacturers to redesign their ADB that is being
26:04sold to other places to fit the U.S. regulation.
26:08So there's only one or two vehicles, even now that I'm aware of, that you can buy it on.
26:14We're still trying to get one to test.
26:16So unfortunately, it's not something you can go out and find readily available right now.
26:24Yeah, and even if every new model in 2026, let's say, came standard with ADBs, it's still going to be
26:30a long time before we would see that technology out on the road.
26:33So, I mean, I think, you know, the average vehicle age is, what, about 12, 13 years old out there.
26:38And so there's a lot of older vehicles.
26:40It takes a long time for these improvements to filter into the fleet.
26:44Are there other things that can be done, you know, better street lighting, that sort of thing that can make
26:50the road safer in the meantime?
26:52Yeah, in terms of glare, specifically, one of the things I looked at was, you know, pairing, matching crashes with
26:59and without glare and trying to see what was different about these.
27:02And so the ones that were kind of glare was more often to be a factor were usually lower speed
27:11roads, but sometimes it was raining or wet.
27:13And so maybe the lane markings are hard to see.
27:17It's another technology thing, but a system that could kind of do a better job of keeping you in your
27:24lane, especially if it could sense that there's potential for glare because there's a lot of light, you know, coming
27:30in could help as well.
27:32So, um, street lighting in lower speed environments, um, certainly could be helpful as well because those are, it's not
27:41going to cause the glare, but give you the visibility.
27:43So, yeah, there are things that can be done, but I'm not sure there's any quick fix right now.
27:50And so, you know, again, we've, we've seen or heard, I should say, a lot of complaints about headlight glare
27:56in recent years.
27:57It's clearly something that people are noticing and people are thinking about.
28:02The new study, you know, says it's not necessarily causing a lot of crashes, but what's, what's your message to
28:07someone that's just, you know, just driving at night isn't that much fun because there's just too much headlight glare.
28:14What's your message to that person?
28:16Well, it's, it's a hard situation to be in.
28:18I mean, there are a lot of people that have health related conditions that are going to be more sensitive
28:23to that.
28:24As we said earlier, even as you age, it's going to become more of an issue.
28:29Um, but there are a couple of things kind of in the data that suggest possible ways forward.
28:36So one of those is that drivers in newer vehicles tended to report less glare even when they were in
28:42a crash.
28:43So, um, it could be the case and there are other kind of more of those laboratory studies that have
28:48suggested this, that if you have better headlights yourself, you may be less sensitive to glare from other headlights.
28:54And so it just, it allows you to still see what you need to see even when you're experiencing glare.
29:00Right.
29:00Like if you're driving during the daytime and someone has their brights on, it's like no big deal.
29:04Right.
29:04Right.
29:05And part of that is your eyes adapted and so that's, yeah, it's, it's not going to always happen the
29:11same way, but it's the same concept of if you get enough light to see what you need to, um,
29:17then the glare, the disability part may not be as big of a problem.
29:22Another thing I would say though, is just try to keep in mind that it's some of it's a matter
29:28of perspective.
29:29You know, your headlights might be causing glare to other drivers in certain conditions you're not aware of, um, and
29:37vice versa.
29:38And, but we're aware of the glare from the others more than necessarily, oh, I can't see far enough with
29:45my own headlights.
29:46And so, um, part of it is just understanding might help with kind of all of our perception of this
29:54is an inherent kind of balance that is required for the technology.
30:00And remembering when you're annoyed by someone else's headlights that, well, maybe it helps them see and avoid a crash
30:08just like my headlights are if, you know, they're bright enough are going to do the same for me.
30:12It might just give you that different perspective.
30:15All right.
30:16So we've got research that you've done showing that, you know, good visibility is linked with lower crash rates.
30:21We've got this new research showing that, that glare, um, you know, isn't implicated in more crashes, you know, over
30:28the period of time.
30:30What's next for you, for you in terms of studying headlights?
30:33Do you have any other, any, uh, studies in mind to look, look at this problem further?
30:37I think the next thing on the horizon probably would be as vehicles with adaptive driving beam technology reach our
30:43market, we need to figure out how to incorporate those in our rating system.
30:48Um, so it may be too much, you know, the technical weeds of things, but do we treat it like
30:53we're treating high beam assist or there are other added benefits beyond high beam assist?
30:58How do we measure those on our track?
31:00And do we have different target vehicles set up that the ADB needs to respond to?
31:06So, again, we're still waiting for those vehicles to be able to, to test them out, but that's probably the
31:12next thing.
31:12That is interesting because presumably if you did a low beam test on our test track with an ADB equipped
31:19vehicle, it would just be blasting light the whole time because there's nothing for it to respond to.
31:23Exactly.
31:24Huh.
31:24Interesting.
31:25All right.
31:25Well, we'll, we'll see.
31:26Hopefully we'll get some of those in soon.
31:28Yeah, I hope so too.
31:30All right.
31:30Well, thank you all so much for spending some time with us today.
31:33I've been talking with Matt Brumbelow about headlights and about this new study looking at headlight glare over time and
31:39how it's affected crash rates.
31:41You can check that out over at IIHS.org and you can check out headlight ratings for your vehicle and
31:46the next one you're considering as well.
31:48So, Matt, thank you so much.
31:49Thank you, Joe.