It’s a staggering statistic: while only one-fourth of all driving is done at night, more than half of driver fatalities occur after dark. On top of that, says the American Automobile Association (AAA), more than three-quarters of pedestrian deaths happen at night.
Nissan says it is boosting headlight performance on its vehicles while simultaneously reducing glare for oncoming traffic. That’s certainly important all year, but especially during the darkest part of the winter months when rush hour typically happens after sunset. Once a luxury upgrade, Nissan now offers brighter, more efficient LED headlights standard on the Altima, Ariya, Armada, GT-R, Maxima, Murano, Pathfinder, Rogue and Z models.
This is how Nissan’s headlight engineering works.
Headlight technology continues to improve
To understand the current state of automotive headlights, look at both the evolution of headlight technology as well as regulations for the U.S. and abroad.
Halogen headlamps used to be the standard, giving way to LED (light emitting diode) lights starting in the mid-2000s. Audi was the first to debut all-LED headlights, on the 2009 Audi R8, and others followed closely behind.
The differences between halogen, high-intensity discharge (HID, or xenon) and LED are significant. Halogen lamps are much cheaper to make, and they emit a warm, yellow light. LEDs emit a cool, bluish-white light, plus they’re about 80 percent more energy efficient and last much longer. Nissan says this creates an unintended consequence as LED lights illuminate the road more clearly and further ahead, but they increase glare for drivers in the oncoming lane.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) started rating headlights in 2016. Out of more than 80 headlight systems available for the 31 models of 2016 midsize cars evaluated, only one system (the Toyota Prius v) received a top rating of “good.” For model year 2023, forty-three percent of headlight…
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