![]() ![]() “You could take that same headlight and put it up high on a pickup truck or down low on a sports car,’’ he said, “and you’ll get very different real-world performance.” With the federal test, “there’s no way to really know, on the road, how much visibility a driver would have from that headlight,” said Matthew Brumbelow, the insurance group’s senior research engineer. That is in contrast with the laboratory-only tests by the N.H.T.S.A. In its tests, engineers measure how far the headlights on a vehicle enable a driver to see down the road on straightaways and curves, and how much glare the headlights produce for oncoming drivers. The S.U.V.s were “even more deficient when it comes to lighting than the midsize cars that were the first to be rated earlier this year,” the group said. Four - the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V, Hyundai Tucson, and Mazda CX-3 - were rated “acceptable.”įive got “marginal’’ ratings and the rest “poor.’’ When the group this week released its headlight ratings for 21 small S.U.V.s, none earned “good’’ ratings. That has nudged automakers to revise models to get better ratings from the group. Several of the group’s crash tests, for example, are more severe than federal tests. This is not the first time the insurance group has pushed automakers to make improvements that exceed federal standards. Honda said the new rigorous testing would “present a new challenge to all automakers” seeking to earn the group’s top rating in 2017. Most of the automakers contacted about the headlight issue declined to comment on the test results, but some, including Nissan and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said they would use the information to improve their headlights. Starting next January, a vehicle that doesn’t get an “acceptable’’ or “good’’ headlight rating will not be eligible for the group’s coveted Top Safety Pick+ designation, a key selling point in some automakers’ ad campaigns. And while its ratings are not legally binding, some automakers view them as a public relations mandate. It is easier for the insurance group to take action. “We don’t go forward with this unless we think we are measuring something that makes a difference in safety.” “That’s how we want to proceed,” Adrian Lund, the insurance group’s president, said. Hoping to shame the auto industry to do better, the insurance group is setting a de facto safety standard for carmakers to meet. Nor does the federal standard specify how far the headlights must illuminate the path ahead. Some revisions have been made, but the actual testing procedure has not changed much.Īnd despite decades of improvement in lighting technology since then, the government still tests headlamps only in a laboratory setting, not in actual cars on dark, winding roads. The federal standard for headlights became effective in 1968. There’s at least one reason for the shortcomings. The best any others could muster was merely “acceptable,’’ and many fared much worse. ![]() Of the dozens of vehicles - small S.U.V.s and midsize cars - whose headlights the insurance institute has tested this year, only one has been rated “good.” That was a 2016 Toyota Prius V.
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