headlights

Published on: April 1, 2022

Adaptive Headlights Will Now be Allowed in the US

Driving at night or in inclement weather in a car with poor visibility due to headlights can be very dangerous and a recipe for a car accident. However, for decades, federal laws have prevented high beam and low beam lights in a car from being operated at the same time. That comes to an end soon as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration scraps the old standard, thereby allowing adaptive headlights to become common in automobiles.

While most other types of car components and tech, including seat belts, have adapted and evolved over the years, headlight tech has remained the same. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 determined that both high beam and low beam lights could not be operated together. That prevented the widespread adoption of technology like adaptive headlights which are found in other countries that do not have such restrictions.

The technology consists of dozens of cameras that can provide different types of lighting depending on the road conditions and can direct the flow of the lighting with precision. That means that high beam and low beam lights can be deployed simultaneously to extend visibility in all directions without blinding other drivers.

Published on: October 25, 2021

Better Headlights More Effective in Preventing Night Time Accidents

by Robert N. Katz, Esq.

Driving at night is typically the least favorite time to drive for most people. Reduced visibility and glare are just some of the dangers of driving at night that can cause accidents. Better headlights that have a high safety rating, however, are much more likely to help reduce the risk of night time accidents. According to a recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, headlight systems that have a good rating by the Institute can significantly help reduce the risk of accidents that occur in the night time.

In 2016, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety developed a safety rating system for headlights. Until then, there was no real way of measuring how headlights fared when compared with each other and when they were actually used in the real world. The federal standard for headlights was outdated, and under these standards, most headlights were more or less considered equal. However in 2016, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety established a headlight ratings program that measured headlight fitness as “good”, “acceptable”, “marginal” or “poor.”

Five years later, a new study finds that since the ratings went into effect, there has been a 19% reduction in the accident rate involving cars with headlights that have a “good” rating, compared to those that have a “poor” headlights rating. When headlights were rated “acceptable” or “marginal,” there was a 15% reduction in the number of accidents that involved these cars. Additionally the study also found that good headlights specifically helped reduce certain types of accidents. For instance, when headlights had a “good” rating there was a 29 percent drop in the number of accidents involving injuries to the driver. These headlights also contributed to a 25% drop in the number of accidents involving pedestrians.

Published on: November 4, 2013

Safer Headlight Technology Being Developed to Prevent Accidents

by Robert N. Katz, Esq.

Every year, there are variations in the number of car accident fatalities, but one fact remains the same — more fatal car accidents occur at night than in the daytime hours.Nighttime driving comes with its own set of challenges, and one of those is the lack of adequate roadway lighting.A new study focuses on the potential for improving nighttime driving through more advanced automobile headlight systems.

The research was recently presented at the International Symposium on Automotive Lighting in Germany.One scientist involved in the study presented a paper outlining the different types of lighting technologies that can help make nighttime driving both safer and easier.Specifically, these technologies involve headlights that can focus light onto particularly tricky and dangerous roadways.This would be done by using headlights that swivel or bend to put more light onto the turn of the road.

According to the report that was presented at the conference, earlier studies that compared cars equipped with these headlight systems and vehicles with conventional low beam headlights, found that the number of accidents occurring at night actually dropped. For instance, there was a drop of approximately 4% in nighttime accident frequency along low-speed roads. On high-speed roads with shallower curves, the drop was between 1% and 2%.