Headlights Get Fresh Attention as More Than a Car Design Flourish
By ERIC A. TAUB FEB. 16, two thousand seventeen
Over the last thirty years, as automotive lighting has graduated from incandescent bulbs to halogen, xenon and now LED, headlamps have undoubtedly gotten brighter.
But they haven’t necessarily gotten better.
In a investigate last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the headlights for only one of thirty one vehicles tested — a Toyota Prius v — earned a “good” rating. Ten models had “poor” headlamps. The worst performer of the lot: one version of BMW’s luxury three Series sedan.
Making good headlamps is not a mystery or even a technical challenge. Often, tho’, as much concentrate is put on how they look as part of the car design as on how well and where they throw light.
“Aesthetic design, not road spectacle, has been controlling headlamps,” said Adrian Lund, the president of the insurance institute.
But that could be switching. This year, for the very first time, the institute will give its coveted highest safety rating, known as Top Safety Pick Plus, only to vehicles whose headlights receive a minimum “adequate” score.
The fresh concentrate on lights will most likely thrust automakers to ensure that their lamps not only shine brightly, but also do so far enough down the road. Already, BMW stopped suggesting the poorly rated halogen lamps on its three Series sedans; as a result, the car was designated a Top Safety Pick Plus.
“Headlamps have not been viewed as the safety component that they should be,” said Jennifer Stockburger, the director of operations for the auto test center for Consumer Reports, which also examines headlight quality.
The insurance institute very first embarked testing headlights in two thousand sixteen to see how well lamps that swiveled around arches, known as curve-adaptive headlamps, would perform. It found that property harm liability claim rates fell nine percent for those cars that had curve-adaptive headlamps.
Working with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Consumers Union, the institute then developed headlamp spectacle standards. It designated how far both low and high planks should reach around kinks and in a straightaway without providing glare.
To be rated acceptable, the second-highest rating, high-beam headlights have to shine at least four hundred ninety two feet down the road, and three hundred twenty eight feet down the right side of the road on low settings.
By law, headlamps today can be of any form, as long as the light output meets specifications set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Headlamps must also adequately avoid glare, or dazzle as it is known in Europe, for oncoming vehicles and pedestrians.
As a result, vehicle manufacturers generally put a lot of effort into making their headlights stand out as part of a vehicle’s design statement, creating lights that swoop, are flush to the figure, or are angled in a way that reflects the vehicle’s sheet metal.
But minimum illumination distance is not mandated, and manufacturers self-certify that their lamps meet the light output criteria.
And once on the road, a diversity of factors — including lamps that weren’t aimed decently at the factory or even springs that haven’t lodged into place yet — can sharply reduce the capability of a headlamp to shine down the road or light up the significant places.
Newer technologies, such as xenon and LED lamps, project light that is brighter and whiter than what traditional incandescent bulbs cast, providing the illusion that they are better. But if they’re incorrectly aimed, they can actually perform worse than older halogen systems, Mr. Lund of the insurance institute said.
When testing headlights, Consumer Reports aims the headlamp according to government specifications. The insurance institute tests lamps as they arrive on the vehicle from the manufacturer. The group says that method gives the consumer a better sense of real-world spectacle.
Regardless of treatment, both groups have found vehicle makers to be responsive to their criticisms.
“The manufacturers are absolutely interested in our results,” said Ms. Stockburger of Consumer Reports. “They’ve switched the spectacle of their headlamps and improved them over the years that we’ve been testing.”
The insurance institute found a similar reaction.
The headlamp spectacle of BMW’s two Series xenon lamps went from “marginal” to “good,” simply by re-aiming the lamps.
Fiat Chrysler moved to LED lamps for all but the base model of the Jeep Wrangler, and now offers xenon lamps as an option on the Jeep Renegade.
And even better lighting systems could be coming soon.
One fresh system, generically known as adaptive driving planks, illuminates the road using around fifty to one hundred distinct LEDs or, as in the case of BMW, a lamp that switches angles. The aim is to get the reach of high slats without throwing glare.
When onboard cameras sense oncoming vehicles or pedestrians, the lights can adjust automatically, either by dimming individual LEDs in the lamp or moving the light down and to the side, in essence providing always-on high planks without shining the slat into the eyes of other drivers.
Adaptive driving slat headlamps are available from several manufacturers, like Audi, the Opel division of General Motors and Mercedes-Benz in Europe, but they’re not yet legal in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the agency that can switch the rules, is now weighing recommendations to make those lights legal.
“We’re very excited about adaptive driving rafters,” said David Hines, director of the agency’s office of crash avoidance standards. He would not predict when the standard would be approved, however.
Further into the future are pixel rafter headlamps, essentially matrix slat headlamps on steroids. They will use more than a thousand individually managed LEDs that turn on and off to light or mask puny oncoming objects.
Developed by Osram and other lighting manufacturers, pixel rafters will be able to shut light off to objects as puny as a driver’s face, or a rearview mirror, said Bart Terburg, Osram’s automotive regulations manager. These fresh systems will begin appearing on cars in about four years, he said.
The federal government will also soon join the insurance institute and Consumer Reports in providing headlamp ratings for prospective buyers, much as it now reports on crash-worthiness and fuel economy. It hopes that such data will show up beginning with model-year two thousand nineteen vehicles. Such ratings could also increase pressure on automakers to do a better job with lighting.
“We want to help illuminate the road,” Mr. Lund of the insurance institute said, “not just make cars prettier.”
A version of this article emerges in print on February 17, 2017, on Page B4 of the Fresh York edition with the headline: An Enlightened Idea: Focusing on How Well Headlamps Work. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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