Headlights Are Too Damn Bright And Nissan Has A Solution

It used to be that headlights were pretty okay. They mostly illuminated the road, and unless somebody was using their high beams inappropriately, they wouldn’t cause you any real grief. Humans love making things “better,” though, and headlights were no exception. Today, we have magnificent LED lamps that illuminate the road like the Sun God just drank a quarter-gallon of red cordial. The only problem is, sometimes today’s mega-bright headlights are a real pain in the eyes for other road users. Everybody’s talking about it, and Nissan, at least, is trying to do something about it.

From Nissan’s standpoint, the big problem is that brighter headlights are sending more light into the lane of oncoming traffic, causing excessive glare for people driving the other way. The company is now designing its LED headlights to cut down on this glare while still maintaining excellent illumination of the road ahead. The idea is to still get the benefit of the greater energy efficiency, compactness, and brightness of LED technology, while counteracting the drawbacks.

Nissan’s idea is to create LED headlights with an asymmetrical beam pattern with an “anti-glare notch” cut out where opposing traffic would usually be. It’s not exactly a new idea, as the basic concept has been long applied to traditional headlights, too. In any case, this cuts the brightness of the part of the headlight beam seen by oncoming traffic, enabling the car to still be visible to other road users without dazzling them. The beam pattern is created by controlling how the LED light sources themselves are directed, and by using light barriers built into the headlight housing as well. It’s also worth noting that, due to the asymmetrical nature of the beam pattern, the headlight design would have to be swapped left-to-right for countries that drive on the opposite side of the road.

“We have the ability to carve out that area of the oncoming lane with everything around it being bright and the inside being super dark,” says Brad Chisholm, a Nissan engineer on the Lights, Mirrors, and Wipers team. “We’re able to push the limits using LEDs.” The requirement for anti-glare notches is usually enshrined in road regulations, but it’s possible to achieve better-defined cutouts with LEDs, according to Nissan.

Headlight engineers: take a few years off.

They're bright enough.

Sincerely, everyone being blinded.

— Zack Klapman (@ZackKlapman) December 7, 2023

For what it’s worth, Nissan doesn’t just expect you to take its word as gospel. It notes that in tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, both the Nissan Rogue and Murano scored top marks for their headlights. Beyond their excellent illumination performance, both on straightaways and curves, the headlights never exceeded glare limits. The IIHS measures glare at a height of 3 feet and 7 inches from the ground, to replicate the sight position of a driver in an oncoming lane. Notably, the agency does not adjust the aim of headlights, instead testing the vehicles as delivered by a dealer—noting that most owners don’t take the time to adjust their vehicle’s headlights.

Notably, though, not every Nissan model was so lauded. Models like the LED-equipped Altima and Ariya still secured good marks, and remained inside glare limits. The 2024 Nissan Frontier, however, was rated poorly, thanks primarily to poor illumination, but also due to exceeding glare limits by 1.3% on certain types of turn. The Nissan Titan performed worse, generating excessive glare for oncoming drivers on straights and corners.

At worst, the IIHS found the Titan to exceed glare thresholds by 88.4%. Visibility was also found to be inadequate on curves, even with high beams enabled. In a twist, both vehicles were using halogen reflectors, rather than LEDs. Overall, few drivers would be surprised that a large, tall pickup would fare poorly in this regard. It suggests that the headlights issues we’re all tangling with aren’t entirely down to LED technology, but may have their roots in fundamental vehicle design.

Anti-glare blockers won’t fix every problem with modern headlights, of course, but it’s a start. Obviously, it doesn’t do a whole lot for drivers in lower regular cars that are getting blinded by the headlamps from SUVs and trucks coming up behind, for example. But any improvement is a boon for road safety, and that’s worthwhile to pursue.

Overall, if you stood at a gas station asking drivers to sign a petition to sort out headlight glare, you wouldn’t be hurting for signatures. Proposals from automakers and testing by the IIHS is all well and good, but many would agree that it’s clearly not solving the problem. Better standards and more engineering effort could help cut glare to some degree, to be sure. Whether we’ll ever beat it for certain when jacked-up SUVs and pickups are sharing the road with regular cars remains to be seen.

Image credits: Nissan