Within the next three years, experts will grade car headlights not by how much they resemble a Swarovski crystal?or as in the case of the Mercedes-Benz S-class coupe (pictured above) how many they actually have?but by how they function. While the federal government specifies brightness, alignment, and other basic technicalities (like making it illegal to drive with strobes), at no point have headlights ever been evaluated for their effectiveness.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will test headlights when it overhauls its New Car Assessment Program for 2019, and the Institute for Highway Safety will incorporate similar results into its Top Safety Pick categories starting next year. Until that happens, is it worth springing for advanced xenons and LEDs on your next car" The IIHS doesn?t think so. In its testing of a random mix of 31 mostly mid-size cars across premium and non-premium segments, only the Toyota Prius V and its LED projector lamps scored the maximum ?good? rating. The standard halogen lights on the BMW 3-series rated ?poor? (optional LEDs scored just ?marginal?) while the Kia Optima?s received a ?poor? rating and also delivered the most glare to oncoming drivers. (See the full results here.) The IIHS ran five test?one straight, a set of 500-foot-radius left and right curves, and another set of 800-foot-radius curves?and compared them with what it considers a ?hypothetical ideal.? On all tests, the IIHS considers an optimal distance requir...