Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

[Kia Stinger]

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But they do crash well.
Continue reading Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[eflyguy]

Well, good that the Stinger isn't on the list - and neither is the Sorento. They must have upped their game because my 2015 had pretty bad stock headlights - my upgrades to HID main & LED high have it where it should have been.

LED has really had an impact, on lighting overall, but especially on autos. I started playing around with it in custom applications (motorcycles) a few years ago but it wasn't *quite* there (quality vs. cost). Now you can get absolutely great upgrades over Halogen for $40 off eBay or Amazon. Manufacturers jumped on it quickly, probably drove a lot of the innovation. Even the street light outside my house is LED now. Yellow was not all they thought it was cracked up to be!

 

[Ucinn]

My 2013 Sorento sucked, but they were just aimed so low. they were fine after I adjusted them up and was never flashed at.

 

[eflyguy]

My 2013 Sorento sucked, but they were just aimed so low. they were fine after I adjusted them up and was never flashed at.

In general, they are badly aligned from the factory, but the main issue is that standard projector housings use a metal plate to cut off light above a certain point. Pull up to a wall and you can see a clearly defined edge.

So where is the light being blocked going? Unfortunately, it's not bouncing around and coming back out. It's simply blocked, and absorbed by the plate.

If you disassemble one (not suggesting you should! I bought various aftermarket units for my experiments), you'll see that the plate covers almost 50% of the lens. So half the light is being blocked.

Drive around with one bulb removed, and you'll know why many modern projector headlights are not meeting safety standards..

So after putting HIDs into my main beam projectors, it was so obvious they were too low. Before, it was just a general fading of the light ahead, which I put down to cheap/stock halogen bulbs. With HIDs, the sharp cutoff was obvious, and just a short way up the road!!! Found a flat parking lot behind a local Target, put tape on the wall and backed away, then adjusted as needed. LET THERE BE LIGHT!! lol...

 

[eflyguy]

One more thing - some of the combined high/low projectors have a solenoid that pulls that plate out of the way for high beam. Yay. A single bulb now provides high and low coverage. Still less light overall than a "proper" high and low setup. Some of the LED units are cool, they leave the low beam emitters on when powering the high beam, so you do actually get twice as much light..

 

[mldavis2]

Although manual adjustment is provided, the GT2 headlights will adjust themselves with you turn the car on. I presume this is to compensate for vehicle height and load. Works very well.

"Good" headlights are not always those that give the driver the best visibility. Some headlights like the huge square lights on Ford trucks are terrible for oncoming drivers. I hate them, especially when they are behind me -- lights are too high off the ground and there is inadequate shielding for other drivers.

 

[atomiccow]

IIHS either hasn't tested or hasn't released any results for the Stinger yet, so not being on the list doesn't mean it won't be on the list. I think the LED-equipped Stingers won't be on the list at least. My Stinger certainly has the best headlights of any car I've ever driven, but I haven't driven any of the cars on that list.