[Mr Roo]

Saw this on the news before heading to work. Basically the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety does their test on OEM headlamps and gave their review. Our of a 100 vehicles tested, only 4 rated as good and 40 were considered poor. When the swapped over and test SUVS, 37 of mid sized SUVs were listed as poor to marginal. The concluded that most manufactures are more worried about the design than the actual performance. In the times when the lights did meet the test many were not aimed correctly off the assembly line. Some of the headlights that tested good are only available in high trim packages so basically you dont meet the safety standard unless you pay up as the consumer. I used to hate on the brodozers with all the LEDs, but they may be on the right track.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/iihs-slams-vehicle-manufacturers-on-poor-headlight-performance/

 

[Volkl]

Nothing to see here

https://forums.vwvortex.com/showthr...ights-GM-Under-Fire&highlight=iihs+headlights

 

[VWVan]

They should of thought about this back in the 70's.

 

[kryptonik]

I drove behind a x4m40i or something along those lines a few weeks ago.

By far the coolest, and nicest headlights I've ever seen. They actively moved with the cars on the road.

In the photo below, that wall on the right was lit up like that till he had to pass a car. Moved over to the middle lane, and the light lowered and avoided the car. Then after the pass, came back up. Same thing with the driver side.

Color, coverage, and the cool moving ****... it was something else. Just being behind it was nice. I can't imagine how nice it must be when you're driving.

 

[ice4life]

I drove behind a x4m40i or something along those lines a few weeks ago.

By far the coolest, and nicest headlights I've ever seen. They actively moved with the cars on the road.

In the photo below, that wall on the right was lit up like that till he had to pass a car. Moved over to the middle lane, and the light lowered and avoided the car. Then after the pass, came back up. Same thing with the driver side.

Color, coverage, and the cool moving ****... it was something else. Just being behind it was nice. I can't imagine how nice it must be when you're driving.

I wonder if that was just the adaptive beam distribution. This happens when the car hits a certain speed; the beam spans lower and out. It also does this when the rain sensor detects rain ie bad weather. It very well could have been that his speed was going over/under the threshold as you passed.

Still cool whatever it is.

 

[Jimmy Russells]

The DOT simply needs to get with the times. So many cars even with LED headlights have to run them at lower wattage especially the high beam, and they can't use dynamic lighting yet (like actual real Matrix LED) yet for the rest of the world this stuff has been around for years.

 

[TangoRed]

I wonder if that was just the adaptive beam distribution. This happens when the car hits a certain speed; the beam spans lower and out. It also does this when the rain sensor detects rain ie bad weather. It very well could have been that his speed was going over/under the threshold as you passed.

Still cool whatever it is.

There are some people that have enabled it via coding though.

 

[kryptonik]

I wonder if that was just the adaptive beam distribution. This happens when the car hits a certain speed; the beam spans lower and out. It also does this when the rain sensor detects rain ie bad weather. It very well could have been that his speed was going over/under the threshold as you passed.

Still cool whatever it is.

Could have been. We were probably cruising around 70, based on my average speed on this drive (my commute home). I just read about the matrix lighting. First I'd heard of it. Definitely seemed to be behaving like that though.

 

[VdubXXIV]

The headlights on my XC60 are unbelievable. Auto high beams detect when and were to shine the light. It will highlight road signs as I pass them and also move with the steering wheel. They constantly adjust to what it senses around me.

 

[Rav_VW]

Maybe if they were aimed at the road and not at oncoming drivers they would work better.

Seriously though, we peaked with Xenon. Even if modern LEDs appear brighter due to high brightness, you're resolving less usable visual information due to the terrible spectrum.

Typical light sources. The human eye sees the most at 550nm, where that big dip in white LED is.

 

[ice4life]

Could have been. We were probably cruising around 70, based on my average speed on this drive (my commute home). I just read about the matrix lighting. First I'd heard of it. Definitely seemed to be behaving like that though.

There are some people that have enabled it via coding though.

Funny you say that- i noticed on the window sticker it usually says "decoding for anti-dazzle lights" i wonder if they are referring to matrix lighting and if it is that simple to code. I mean on the new A6/A7/A8/Q8/e-tron, you can order "matrix style" lights which "can likely be coded by your dealer at a later date." per the order guides. Makes me think a lot of cars are going to be ready for the hopefully updated DOT regs, and just flip the switch (pun intended) to be matrix light ready in the US.

 

[Jimmy Russells]

Funny you say that- i noticed on the window sticker it usually says "decoding for anti-dazzle lights" i wonder if they are referring to matrix lighting and if it is that simple to code. I mean on the new A6/A7/A8/Q8/e-tron, you can order "matrix style" lights which "can likely be coded by your dealer at a later date." per the order guides. Makes me think a lot of cars are going to be ready for the hopefully updated DOT regs, and just flip the switch (pun intended) to be matrix light ready in the US.

Porsche is doing the same thing, apparently the approval is a few months away

 

[TangoRed]

Funny you say that- i noticed on the window sticker it usually says "decoding for anti-dazzle lights" i wonder if they are referring to matrix lighting and if it is that simple to code. I mean on the new A6/A7/A8/Q8/e-tron, you can order "matrix style" lights which "can likely be coded by your dealer at a later date." per the order guides. Makes me think a lot of cars are going to be ready for the hopefully updated DOT regs, and just flip the switch (pun intended) to be matrix light ready in the US.

There's a healthy amount of people enabling it the BMW forums. It seems a bit "involved" to do yourself but there's people out there that will do it for you remotely once you hook up the car to a certain program.

 

[ice4life]

Maybe if they were aimed at the road and not at oncoming drivers they would work better.

Seriously though, we peaked with Xenon. Even if modern LEDs appear brighter due to high brightness, you're resolving less usable visual information due to the terrible spectrum.

Typical light sources. The human eye sees the most at 550nm, where that big dip in white LED is.

This is very cool- I think one of the things you touched on and missed at the same time is intensity. Most xenon headlights were "High Intensity Discharge" lamps. People often believed these two things were synonymous, however they are different. There were examples of HID halogen projector lamps with AFS (Lexus LX570, Lincoln MKX) and there are now today even examples of regular LED headlamps and HID LED headlamps.

A good example is the new Chevy Silverado 1500- Most trims come with LED reflector garbage headlights. But only the high country gets the special HID LED headlights which have a more intense beam.

Same thing with my new Jetta- The base model and many volume trims get the reflector led headlights. Only the SEL/SEL-p get projector HID LED headlights and they are noticeably different- I have tested both (loaner vs mine).

Just food for thought- I am getting at the point that LED lights with HID or even Laser level tech are much better than any xenon lights. However, with so many garbage reflector LED lights flooding the market, its a no wonder there is so much misconception as to why everything is scoring so terribly.

And for the auto manufcaturers- I would rather you offer a basic light on lower trims, and an optional/higher trim light that was actually good like on the Jetta. With the Atlas, they thought making LEDs standard across the board was a good decision, but it came at the cost of the quality of the lights being subpar across the board (all garbage reflector units).

 

[TDIBUGMAN]

I drove behind a x4m40i or something along those lines a few weeks ago.

By far the coolest, and nicest headlights I've ever seen. They actively moved with the cars on the road.

In the photo below, that wall on the right was lit up like that till he had to pass a car. Moved over to the middle lane, and the light lowered and avoided the car. Then after the pass, came back up. Same thing with the driver side.

Color, coverage, and the cool moving ****... it was something else. Just being behind it was nice. I can't imagine how nice it must be when you're driving.

The DOT simply needs to get with the times. So many cars even with LED headlights have to run them at lower wattage especially the high beam, and they can't use dynamic lighting yet (like actual real Matrix LED) yet for the rest of the world this stuff has been around for years.

Both of our i3's had "Active LED" headlamps. But only the 2018 has the full LED setup and active portion functioning. Swivel, main beam dip, etc. done by alternating some of the light pattern. They are way cool - and probably a boat load to replace.

 

[ForTheWin]

The DOT simply needs to get with the times. So many cars even with LED headlights have to run them at lower wattage especially the high beam, and they can't use dynamic lighting yet (like actual real Matrix LED) yet for the rest of the world this stuff has been around for years.

Not to mention DOT laws requiring high beams and low beams to be separately controllable functions. That's mostly why we didn't get the Audi Matrix headlights.

 

[ice4life]

Not to mention DOT laws requiring high beams and low beams to be separately controllable functions. That's mostly why we didn't get the Audi Matrix headlights.

I guess the VAG execs need to take out some D.C. lobbyists for some schnitzel and a boot.

 

[VWestlife]

Hopefully they'll test indicator lights next. If the IIHS ends up conclusively proving that red rear turn signals are less visible than amber, it might pressure the automakers into giving up the current fad of using red rear turn signals on more and more new vehicles:

 

[vwpiloto]

Hopefully they'll test indicator lights next. If the IIHS ends up conclusively proving that red rear turn signals are less visible than amber, it might pressure the automakers into giving up the current fad of using red rear turn signals on more and more new vehicles:

Some of the newer LED taillights are so blindingly bright that sometimes I can't even tell that the signal is on. In those particular cases, the color differentiation is even more critical.

 

[mach250]

Not to mention DOT laws requiring high beams and low beams to be separately controllable functions. That's mostly why we didn't get the Audi Matrix headlights.

This is why I plan on coding my M550i's headlights once I receive it to turn this feature on.

Hopefully they'll test indicator lights next. If the IIHS ends up conclusively proving that red rear turn signals are less visible than amber, it might pressure the automakers into giving up the current fad of using red rear turn signals on more and more new vehicles:

They need to hurry up on this, red turn signals do need to be replaced with amber because some vehicles just have terrible designs making it hard to differentiate.