Automotive Lighting Regulations: News and Views
In 2001-2002, the US Federal Government's Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was nominally considering changing the headlamp performance standards contained in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108. Although these standards are promulgated by an agency of the United States government, practically they set the vehicle lighting performance, construction, and configuration requirements for the USA, Canada and Mexico. The nominal interest in possibly changing the standard arose from complaints of excessive headlamp glare.
NHTSA's request for comment provided background on the issue and asked 46 questions on how glare might be addressed. Some of these questions appear to have been written so as to lead towards pre-determined conclusions. Some of the questions are phrased as though one must choose between good seeing or low glare from a headlamp, but cannot have both. In fact, while the two goals of good seeing and good control of glare often are in direct conflict, it is certainly possible to have reasonable levels of both.
The agency's stated interest in addressing glare did not translate into any action; after NHTSA received well over 5,000 comments—a record, by far—the docket was quietly closed and nothing changed (though additional public comments submitted after the cutoff date have been posted). Since then, glare complaints have grown in volume and pitch as headlamps have grown smaller, bluer, and brighter.
If you wish to gain an understanding of some of the issues involved and how they might be effectively addressed, you may download my response to NHTSA's glare RFC off the local server here, or you may get it here out of the glare docket, the entirety of which can be accessed here.
Daniel Stern Lighting (Daniel J. Stern, Proprietor)
Copyright ©2007 Daniel J. Stern. Latest revisions 1/25. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without express permission of author. Permission to quote is granted for the purposes of communication with the author.