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The Headlight Brightness Wars

The crusade against bright headlights has picked up speed in recent years, in large part due to a couple of Reddit nerds. Could they know what’s best for the auto industry better than the auto industry itself?

Going by the publicly available data of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, headlight brightness has roughly doubled in the past 10 years—although you probably don’t need convincing if you’ve been paying attention over that span. Chris Trechter, a lighting-focused engineer who used to work for Magna International, the largest automobile parts manufacturer in North America, told me the company would adhere to 108 in making headlights for clients like General Motors but that the rule is “archaic.” “It does not account for LEDs,” he said, “and there are giant loopholes that allow you to throw basically unlimited light as long as you meet all the other aspects of 108.” On a recent episode of the Carmudgeon Show podcast, auto journalist Jason Cammisa described a phenomenon occurring with some LED headlights in which there are observable minor spots of dimness among an otherwise bright field of light.

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