If there’s one topic that’ll get anyone with a car riled up—enthusiast or not—it’s headlights. Every single person I’ve talked to about modern headlights has said they’ve experienced some level of glare or blindness due to oncoming headlights being too bright.
It’s not like I ask for these opinions, either. Almost every day, I see someone, somewhere online, voicing their opinions about how headlights on today’s cars are bright enough to cause temporary blindness and can create a dangerous condition for drivers who encounter them.
These opinions are strong and popular enough that Transport Canada, the nation’s federal department that manages the rules for the road, is now conducting a survey to find out just how detrimental today’s headlights are to its citizens. That means Canadians are getting a rare opportunity to directly tell the government how they feel about getting blinded by pointlessly bright lights from oncoming traffic.
Canada Doing It Right
As I mentioned in today’s Morning Dump, Canada borrows much of its vehicle regulations from the United States. That means when it comes to lighting, you’ll run into the same levels of brightness from today’s LED-style headlights, whether you’re north or south of the U.S.-Canada border. The issue, as Driving.ca puts it, is that while the widespread adoption of LEDs has greatly improved visibility for drivers, the regulations haven’t caught up with the glare they produce.
LEDs – which started showing up in the early to mid-2000s and have become almost an industry standard within the past five years – and the high-intensity discharge (HID) headlights that came just before them in the late 1990s are without question brighter than the halogen bulbs of yore.
But the problem at the core of the headlight brightness issue, according to B.C.-based driving-vision expert Daniel Stern, is a mismatch: automakers are eagerly embracing new technology, but regulations haven’t caught up with the glare these brighter lights produce.
Glare is not addressed in Transport Canada’s Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (CMVSS), which closely mirror U.S. regulations. The Society of Automotive Engineers technical standards also don’t mention glare.
At the beginning of the year, the Vancouver City Council unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal government to address overly bright vehicle headlights. According to CBC News, the mayor wrote a letter to Transport Canada urging the agency to take action to address citizens’ concerns. This survey, then, is the first of those actions.
The survey itself is fairly straightforward. Open from March 6 to April 20, it takes about 15 minutes to complete and asks a series of questions about how often you drive at night, whether oncoming headlight brightness has affected you, how often you experience headlight glare, and whether that glare actually impedes your ability to drive. At the end, there’s even a space where you can leave your opinion on anything related to the subject.
The survey is only open to Canadian residents, and the results are anonymous, which means that the government won’t come after you if you happen to have especially strong feelings about blinding headlights… probably. No promises.
Where’s America In All Of This?
The federal standards in the U.S. for minimum and maximum headlight brightness haven’t changed for nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, headlight tech has evolved greatly. Back in August, Washington Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez voiced her concerns at the U.S. Capitol. From KGW8:
“There is a plague in this country of headlight brightness,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in July. “It is shockingly bright. If you look back to halogen light bulbs, you’re reaching somewhere around 700 to 1200 lumens. New LED technology, these sons of b—s get to 12,000 lumens.”
[…]
“It’s not a binary choice between walking around in the dark and the fire of 1,000 suns,” she said. “The standards on this have not been reformed since before I was born.”
Since then, not much has changed. Back in October, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released a study to see whether the huge increase in complaints about headlights actually correlated to more crashes. I wrote about this when the study came out, but as a reminder, here’s what the organization found after analyzing crash data:
Out of around 24 million total crashes, fewer than 150,000 had glare coded as a contributing factor, and a far smaller fraction were both coded for glare and occurred at night. With a few exceptions, these nighttime glare crashes accounted for only one or two out of a thousand crashes per year in all 11 states.
Moreover, while this glare rate ticked up and down a little, it remained relatively constant over the study period and certainly did not show a steady increase coinciding with the improvement in IIHS headlight ratings. In fact, the glare rate was highest in 2015 and lowest in 2020.
So basically, while the headlights are definitely brighter, there isn’t really reliable data saying they’re any more dangerous. Personally, I’m still not so sure. What I’d really like is for America to release a survey like Canada did, so people can actually voice their concerns directly to the Department of Transportation. Until that happens, I suggest phoning your congressperson every single day until they do something about the scourge of headlights ruining our roads.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
Having just completed the Canadian survey I had to include the obvious: Name that headlight! Being in at work at 5:30am Monday to Friday, these bright headlights have become a pet peeve.
Mazda…wft? why are your headlights such an intense blue range, they piercing the back of my eyeball.
Ford!!! your F150/F250 with the E shaped LED around your stupidly intense headlight AND fog lights on at the same time are so bright I can see through my hand when I shield my eyes.
Seriously, fog lights make no difference and you drivers always have them on.
GM (Chevy or GMC) Why are your daytime running lights/regular headlight and fog lights all on at the same time? Is this a manufacturer defect? or just a quality union made oops?
Those are my top 3 pain in the eye vehicles. There must be more but I can’t see so good anymore.
Yeah, Mazda and Honda are two of the biggest offenders with OEM LED headlights. It’s disappointing because they are so thoughtful in their design in so many other ways.
Honda civics. There must be something wrong with their high beam control because more than half of the high beam cruisers I see are civics.
Help us, OBD-I Canadia. You’re our only hope
I just filled out the survey. Glare is part of the problem.
Another part is new vehicles that have automatic high beam systems that don’t work as they should.
And another part of the problem is clueless drivers who are unaware of the glare they cause and when to and when not to use high beams.
For the last problem, what is needed is mandatory driver re-training/refresher courses every 5 years or so.
If NHTSA hadn’t shit the bed regarding adaptive headlights…brightness would not be a concern, since they’d never be in your eyes.
But alas, they did so…we can’t have those.
This is a huge problem for me, as headlight brightness has increased as my eyes have aged. But the biggest problem now is automatic high beams. I drive a lot of backroads at night and EVERY car I approach now high beams me for several seconds until the other car’s sensor detects my dim 90’s headlights and switches to low beams.
It used to be that any decent human would dim the lights in advance when cresting a hill and you can tell there’s another car on the other side. Not anymore.
“But the biggest problem now is automatic high beams. “
And in a lot of cases, the sensors these use don’t fucking work right.
Like with diesel emissions, government needs needs to test and verify whether what manufacturers claim is the actual reality.
Some of the latest Hondas seem to have automatic high beams that seem to NEVER go to the low beam setting.
Hondas in general seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to driving around in traffic with high beams on. I swear 90% of the time when some dork is oncoming or behind me, I can tell from the headlight shape it’s a 00’s-10s Civic or Accord. Is the blinker stalk on those easy to accidentally flip forward to highs or something? Newer accords and stuff with the LED headlights, when on high are an absolute supernova, and yeah, I’ve noticed their auto-highs don’t seem to deactivate until they are within like 50 yards of you.
My parents had a mid-00s Explorer and I recall the blinker stalk on that was at kind of a sharp angle toward the wheel, and the “detent” for high beams wasn’t super noticeable, so it was really easy to inadvertendly knock it onto highs using the blinker during the day. Of course at night I’d notice the high beam indicator on and move it back, but since it also had auto-headlights, my dad, who could not be convinced otherwise, thought the high beams were auto also so it didn’t matter which position the stalk was on. So riding around with him some car would be flashing it’s lights at us and he’d be like “what’s their problem”.
They are awful to use too. My gf’s hyundia likes to flip them off for what i swear is their own reflection in the deer’s eyes
The problem, in large part, is headlamp height. Euro regs mandate much lower height than the US, even on heavy trucks. These same regs also mandate much tighter beam control.The Volvo VNL’s my company runs have very bright lamps, but I notice that approching one oncoming at night, there is no glare. And Fords have been the worst offenders since the seventies.
Euro regs mandate much lower height than the US, even on heavy trucks.
Short answer: No.
Keep in mind about the difference between headlamp mounting position and performance.
ECE regulations don’t have the maximum height, but it’s constrained by: 1. beam aiming requirements; 2. glare control; and 3. symmetry and positioning rules. In other word, it’s easier to position the headlamps lower as to comply with those three rules.
The downward tilt angle varies sharply between the low-positioned and high-positioned headlamps. In other word, High-positioned headlamps are aimed steeper downward than the low-positioned ones so the output from different heights hits the same area at test distance.
ECE regulations mandate the sharp horizontal cut-off line (glare boundary) with part angling upward to the right (or to the left for the left-hand rule-of-road) as to illuminate the traffic signage. This is called “glare control”. The cut-off is situated at a precise height relative to the road regardless of headlamps’ position.
Additionally, ECE regulations mandate the automatic aiming mechanism for HID and LED headlamps. On the vehicles with halogen headlamps, the drivers can adjust the aiming from the thumb wheel or dial on the dashboard. If the vehicle is equipped with self-levelling suspension, no need to adjust the aim manually.
NHTSA doesn’t have those mandates. So, the blinding glares from the vehicles in the United States and Canada are allowed.
I can tell a Ford truck or SUV a mile away. Their headlights are far and away the brightest and cause the most glare. On top of that, their auto-dimming just doesn’t work.
I so wish that Canada would adopt European headlight regulations for vehicles sold in Canada – I never have glare problems when I am driving in Europe.
If Canada said “Any vehicle sold in Canada that is also homogulated for sale in Europe must follow European standards for headlights” that would solve the problem for over 90% of new vehicles sold in Canada without creating a conflict with the standardization of our vehicle regulations with the United States.
Interestingly, CMVSS didn’t mandate the sealed beam headlamps until 1973 so some of European vehicles sold in Canada through the official sales channels had ECE headlamps. Like those Citroën SM in Vancouver, BC with ECE headlamps and side running lamps and retroreflective markers.
Canada was this –><– close in switching from CMVSS to ECE regulations in early 2000s. The domestic manufacturers threatened to shut down the manufacturing plants in Canada if that happened. So, weak-kneed Canada rescinded its plan…
Now, the final answer: Canada does allow, but not mandate, the ECE headlamps. It’s up to the manufacturers to offer them in Canada.
Interestingly, Canada didn’t mandate the sealed-beam headlamps until 1973. So, several European vehicles had been sold in Canada with ECE headlamps, including this Citroën SM.
Now, Canada does allow—but not mandate—the ECE headlamps as legal alternative since 2018 (CMVSS 108.1). It’s up to the manufacturers to offer them or stick with shitty US headlamps.
Canada explored the deeper harmonisation with ECE regulations in the late 1990s and early 2000s as to move away from strict US alignment. The domestic manufacturers bent Canada’s arm and threatened to shut down the Canadian manufacturing if Canada went ahead with the harmonisation…
The goggles do nothing!
How about people who drive with no taillights? Just because your gauges are lit or your iPad mounted in the dash is on doesn’t mean your taillights are on.
The amount of times I’ve almost been turned into a road pancake by some asshole driving without lights is far too high. Day, night, fog, rain, they drive in it all with no lights, and it makes it very hard to see them under certain normal conditions.
Favorite was when I was having a medical emergency and blew a stop sign while biking on a back road with cars parked on one side. The stop sign is three way, and the one arm is a short dead end that only semis go down.
I’m scanning the intersection like crazy because I can’t stop, no cars, just the parked ones. Turns out one of them, with disabled blacked out headlights, heavy window tint, and no blinker was turning there, and he lost his shit. Not my fault I can’t tell you’re turning, or if your car is even occupied, tough titties. You shouldn’t have made every effort to look exactly like a parked car, including being in a line of them.
Especially in newer cars with auto lights. I just leave my Polestar 2 on auto the whole time same with the fiance’s Buick. But then you have people like my uncle that think having it on that setting will prematurely wear the lights out some how.
Canada already has legislation around that. It’s part why lighting defaulting to Auto every key cycle has become mostly ubiquitous.
Besides the brightness, the other key factor of today’s headlights are the vehicles they are mounted on. Modern SUVs and trucks carry their main headlights three or four feet above the road. That’s bound to spotlight anybody who’s still driving a low-slung car. We need maximum headlight height regs!
FMVSS sets the maximum headlight height at 54 inches as measured from the center of the lowest bulb in the headlight assembly.
Some states also have aiming regulations. In Oregon the high intensity part of the beam cannot be more than 42 inches above the ground at 75 feet.
I’m glad to hear there are some regs.But 54 inches is pretty tall, at 4 1/2 feet.
The problem with NHTSA is that it doesn’t mandate the output to hit the same area at a test distance as ECE regulations do.
The survey itself isn’t just “bright lights!!!” It also covers a number of other problems related to lights and safety. Strangely, there isn’t an option to complain about poorly configured aftermarket lights, but there is a spot to write them in (which I did).
But, I also don’t agree with everyone saying that lights aren’t brighter now. Just by nature of the technology difference they’re brighter. Which isn’t a problem if we had a legislative environment that allows for the distribution of better light technology safely… which we don’t. It’s just “bright!!”
I think our government is frequently ineffectual, but I’m glad to see them taking on the real issues here.
Lifted vehicles whose owners don’t adjust their LED headlights are a huge problem here. Also at issue are the idiots running the off-road lighting on their over-lifted mall-crawlers. I know, I know, already illegal but I really felt the need to add that.
Also, as far as the data goes, OF COURSE there was a lower number of incidents in 2020. There were far fewer cars on the road. Any good analysis would make note of the likelihood of anomalous data for that year.
I think we definitely need more data here, because everyone’s argument for or against headlight brightness is largely based on vibes. I’m not sure a survey is the empirical data that will help quell this issue, but it’s a start.
I would not find it acceptable to roll back the safety improvements of modern lighting to satisfy people’s impressions of glare. If a more robust study concludes the same thing the IIHS found in October, then we don’t have an issue to solve.
I think we have all forgotten how terrible lighting was 30 years ago.
Or, we could legalize matrix lights and mandate self leveling systems.
This data shouldn’t even be that hard to collect. Get some cars and slap a small sensor on the A pillar at eye height. Measure light levels and polarity.
These are a plague on mankind. Also a plague jacked up vehicles that do not realign the headlights to reflect being 2 feet higher. Also emergency or service vehicle with lights for safety that are bright to see in the day but to blind at night
The stats for accidents coded for glare involvement are missing at least two classes, however large or small they might be:
3.. People that saw things just fine but decided to blame glare.
I didn’t see them officer… Why not? Um, Um … it was the glare that’s it the glare.
I’m going to make some time to fill this in later, since I think it’s a tragedy of the commons and a genuine bad safety trade-off. The folks enjoying better visibility at night are less likely to crash, but everybody downrange of them is more likely to after being dazzled, including pedestrians and cyclists who disappear in the glare.
On the OEM side the incentives push the manufacturers to one-up each other on both measurable lumens and perceived/subjective brightness, and then push tech like adaptive laser beams as a profitable solution to the complaints. A lot of good could be done by just updating the test standards, especially to cover testing on hills.
Aftermarket LEDs in fixtures designed for halogen are a safety issue, have rarely been legal, and should be addressed by ticketing. Revenue should cover the cost of enforcement, enact it with a fix-it ticket scheme where it’s dismissed if you can demonstrate the lights are OEM or at least certified and legal.
There’s also a highly entertaining subreddit on this topic if you’re so inclined.
There are a whole host of vehicle violations that could be addressed with police enforcement with revenue from those tickets covering the cost. I’ve seen no stomach from police departments to actually enforce traffic laws besides an occasional speeding ticket.
Loud exhausts
Smoking vehicles
Bumper heights
Giant mud tires with no fenders
Aftermarket LEDs in fixtures designed for halogen bulbs are generally perfectly fine, and should absolutely not be illegal.
Sure, the housings are designed for the beam that a halogen produces, but in practice, LED replacements if aimed properly usually work well in these housings, and allow better visibility for the driver.
If initial headlight aim was poor, switching to LEDs will exacerbate this problem, so headlight aim is more critical due to the brightness of the LED.
So rest easy, and put the ticket book away. The LEDs are not a safety issue.
This is only true for the latest generation of aftermarket LED bulbs that put the emitters in same location as the filament of a halogen bulb. For a very long time, 100% of aftermarket LEDs sprayed light every direction but forward, and the cheap ones still do. If our politicians were interested in making government effective they would develop a framework to approve the ones that work and get the ones that don’t off the market.
That makes sense. Hopefully, the cheap electronics will mean that the older style are not around much longer.
I can understand wanting to make aftermarket LED bulbs draw the same current as halogens to avoid angering the dash light god and I can understand a preference to make LED bulbs brighter rather than wasting the current through a resistor but what I cannot understand is why the threshold for that trigger can’t be dialed down via the OBD2 port to the lower current draw of LED bulbs.
Nothing to do with current or electricity or voodoo magic. NHTSA allows the upward glare while ECE regulations mandate the sharp horizontal cut-off at exact height regardless of how high or low the headlamps are positioned.
You seem to be talking about beam shape while I’m talking about overall light intensity.
“Light intensity”, a.k.a. glare. You don’t seem to understand how the beam shape influence the perception of “oh, that’s so fucking bright!” or “they look normal”. US headlamps allow lot of upward glare and less tight control of output than ECE headlamps. US allows the shittiest of shitty headlamps which would fail ECE regulations by wide margin.
Many aftermarket LED bulbs sold in the US are often labelled “FOR OFF-ROAD USE ONLY”, yet the owners don’t give a fuck about it. Many of them aren’t engineered and manufactured precisely for the proper output. Unlike Germany and many European countries, US doesn’t test and certify them for the road use. Same for the aftermarket headlamps.
Germany’s Federal Motor Vehicle Authority (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, KBA) test each and every aftermarket product as to ensure they comply with ECE regulations. The aftermarket headlamps and taillamps must be tested and certified as such before they could be sold in Germany and many European countries. OSRAM and Philips have the compatibility list of vehicles with halogen headlamps that are approved for the LED bulb retrofit kits. If your vehicle isn’t on the list, you can’t install the LED bulbs, period. (I waited two years for my mum’s 2009 VW Polo to be approved for those bulbs).
Germany and many European countries are very strict about the compliance with automotive safety and emission regulations while the United States doesn’t. Once you own the vehicle in the US, you can do whatever you damn want with the car (depending on which state you live in). Not in Germany…where they are vigorously enforced, and non-compliance carries heavy penalty.
The automotive electrical system for the passenger vehicle is always 12 volts while the hybrid system is 48 volts. You can’t theoretically increase voltage or current to the LED bulbs and expect them to be brighter. Or reduce them to dim the LED bulbs.
When I lived in Texas in the 1990s, I installed the Hella ECE headlamp capsules with 100/130-watt H4 and 100-watt H1 halogen bulbs. They were necessary for the rural areas with no street lamps. I didn’t get flashed by the approaching drivers due to the sharp horizontal cut-off.
If I installed the 100/130-watt HB4 and 100-watt HB1 bulbs in the US headlamps, the drivers approaching me or in front of me would scream and flash at me endlessly while the plastic lens and housing melt and catch fire from higher heat generated by the bulb.
I’m going by this, as stated in the story:
“It is shockingly bright. If you look back to halogen light bulbs, you’re reaching somewhere around 700 to 1200 lumens. New LED technology, these sons of b—s get to 12,000 lumens.”
Nowhere is beam shape or misalignment mentioned as the issue, only lumens.
I’ll add another vote for the problem being mostly people with aftermarket lights and who drive everywhere with their brights on.
Personally, my issue with newer stock lights is that the cutoff is too low. If I’m going down a hill and approaching another rise there is an almost dead flat cutoff between nice bright illumination and then nothing above that line. It can be hard to gauge what is on the other side of the rise or around a corner when modern headlights give you a binary dividing line of all or nothing.
Yeah, this morning, on my way to work, it was mostly light out, most people had their low beams on (myself included) not entirely necessary, more for safety. In my 15 minute commute, I counted 5 cars with high beams on, and 1 F-250 with a light bar mounted on the bumper fully on.
Getting it right with the manufacturers is a great start. But it’s half (or less) of the problem.
The dumb bunnies that install LED lighting in halogen fixtures need to stop doing that. The result is often way worse than some factory LED lights.
Or the cheap aftermarket LEDs that probably are made worse by bad alignment. Or the truck leveling/lift kits installed without adjusting alignment.
I’ve got LEDs in halogen fixtures, properly aimed, and they work amazing.
Not blinding anyone on the road, and my visibility increased substantially.
I’m definitely going to keep doing this even though I know it hurts you.
Thank you for doing it right.
“…Marie Gluesenkamp Perez voiced her concerns…”
Broken clock is right twice a day for once.
I honestly haven’t noticed any increased glare or problems with oncoming headlights. I do enjoy my newer car’s headlight coverage better than my old one and feel it is much safer. Of course, every now and again you run into someone who either doesn’t realize their brights are on, who doesn’t have their lights properly aligned, or who has some dumb aftermarket lighting thing going on. But I haven’t noticed increased problems.
If no one around is a problem for a common problem, you are the problem. Lol
I loved night driving until a couple of years ago. Now I find it really distressing because of this. The OEM LEDs are a problem, but much worse for me are the freaks who retrofit their composite housings or sealed beams with LEDs and blast searing white light directly in my eyes. Even in broad daylight the intense white light is uncomfortable. The power output is an issue but the 6500k color turns the headlights into supernovas.
And the LED retrofits usually look cosmetically terrible, too. Like putting foam faux stone siding on a Victorian house.
Many older vehicles have poor headlight aim that they’ve been able to get away with due to weaker halogen bulbs. When they switch to LEDs, the brighter light makes the poor headlight aim a much more oblivious issue.
That’s what glaring into your eyes.
Personally, the most blinding glare I experience on the road are from newer vehicles and trucks pulling up behind me. Of course retrofitted LEDs that are aimed poorly are a problem, but one I’ve experienced with much less frequency compared to newer vehicles.
Blaming this on headlight aim is a diversion. The cars in question blast the same white light in all directsions because the housings were not designed for the color and output of the bulbs. This is a problem of mixing incompatible technologies, and it’s being made much worse by unscrupulous vendors marketing the brightest, whitest bulbs as “better”.
Nope, the halogen headlamps can be retrofitted with LED bulbs ONLY if they have been tested and certified as compatible. See my comment above to Pappa P.
They are better in most cases. Much better visibility and I’m not blinding anyone. I’m not lighting up anyone’s face when driving towards them, and I’m not searing the back of anyone’s head when I pull up behind them. Thats more than I can say for many OEM headlights that I encounter on the road. If it’s a pickup, the headlights are at the same height as the back of my head in my RAV4, so its like having a huge spot lamp aimed at the back of my head.
Oncoming cars flash are glare me in my eyes as they go over road undulations. The offenders are all cars with factory LEDs.
I’ve heard some of the older LEDs worked poorly in halogen housings, but most of the current ones I’m seeing are designed for retrofit.
I can confirm that they are very effective.
That is why Germany’s Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (Federal Motor Transport Authority) is very strict about the aftermarket LED bulbs for the older vehicles. Each vehicle must be approved for the LED bulbs.
My mum has 2009 VW Polo with halogen headlamps that could use some more improvement. I waited two years for KBA to approve her car for H7 and H1 LED bulbs. If the vehicle isn’t on the compatibility list, the penalty is quite stiff for the non-compliance.
I’m honestly not sure about the current legality of these in Canada. I would say that if there is legislation, it is rarely enforced.
Apparently feel free to make your non-Canadian voice heard too?…via an anonymous survey 😐