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Picture this.
It's the middle of a moonless night.
Where can you find the car testers of Consumer Reports?
Why, at the auto test track, of course,
performing an illuminating task.
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It's pitch dark and the headlight test team
turns on, first, the low beams, then the high beams of a car,
just like you or I might while driving.
Then Director of Operations Jen Stockburger
peers into the darkness and records what she is
able to see out the windshield.
Properly functioning headlights are a vital part of car safety
because they allow a driver to see what's ahead
and, in some cases, to be seen.
When we're testing headlights, we're
looking, mainly, for how far they reach and luminate
straight ahead, down the road, where it's most important.
We're also looking for how they light to the sides of the road
for anything coming that way.
Intensity or the brightness of the light is also important.
And finally, we're looking for a nice, even beam pattern
and whether it's bright enough that it would cause glare
to other drivers.
Earlier that day, Jen's team set up a series of black targets
at prescribed intervals and widths
along a 900 foot long level section of track.
They used black targets, which are
almost invisible in the moonless night
to really push headlights to their limit of illuminating
the road ahead.
Once night falls, they shine the lights
of each test car down the track at the targets.
Headlight performance varies greatly.
We find some cars that do an incredible job
of lighting the road ahead.
And others, well, they just do not.
Our job is to determine which ones do it well
and to pass that information along to consumers.
Why does this matter?
Say you're driving along a dark highway at 60 miles per hour.
If an obstacle appears in the road ahead of you,
it will take at least two seconds for you
to see it in step on the brakes.
In that short time, your car can travel over 170 feet closer
to that obstruction.
Once you apply the brakes, it takes
another 131 feet for the average car to come to a complete stop.
So being able to see an object 300 feet ahead versus 100 feet
ahead could make the difference between avoiding it or hitting
it.
When you're driving 60 miles per hour,
you're going to need at least 300 feet
to see, react, and come to a stop for anything in the road
ahead.
So it's important that headlights
illuminate at least that far.
Regarding the tests that you do, the data
that you gather, how does that make a consumer smarter.
We certainly are hoping to say, at least in terms of safety,
which vehicles have headlights that provide the greater seeing
distance.
It may not matter that they're brighter.
But it's about the performance.
What kind of headlights are there?
The oldest is a halogen bulb.
It's like you'd see in a regular light bulb.
They're a little bit more yellow in color.
And that's still what comes on most vehicles.
Newer technologies, high intensity discharge
or xenon bulbs were popular a number of years ago.
But the latest and greatest is LED Light Emitting Diode
headlights.
They're a very white, a very bright light.
And we've seen many, even mainstream cars
coming with LED headlights.
Here are Jen's top tips for headlight safety.
1, make sure your headlights are properly aligned and clean.
It's very important to keep them aligned,
so that you're getting the best seeing distance as a driver
but not glaring oncoming drivers.
It's probably something best done by your mechanic
because they have the right equipment.
2, if you're buying a car, look for advanced features
like automatic high beams.
They measure the conditions.
They know there's no traffic.
And they switch to high beams, automatically.
3, test out the headlights.
If you drive a ton of hours at night or after dark,
absolutely, take that night, test drive,
and consider the type of roads you're on.
Are they well lit?
Are they curvy and have a lot of dips and bumps?
If you can take the car on those roads
that you're on most often, that would be great.
4, Jen has some great advice if you're out on the road
and you find a car driving toward you with its brights on.
If you're finding the glare discomforting to try and look
to the right side of the road.
Why?
Follow the white line, so that glare's not causing an issue.
Remember, a good set of headlights
will help keep you safe at night.
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