Vehicle Headlights: Aiming for Better Driving Safety
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By Dr. John Bullough
Guest Editorial
July 22, 2016; New data reveals that correctly aiming headlights has a significant positive influence on nighttime driving safety. Dr. John Bullough's Guest Editorial, "Vehicle Headlights: Aiming for Better Driving Safety (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15502724.2016.1204798)," appeared in LEUKOS (http://ies.tandfonline.com/toc/ulks20/current) Issue 12(4).
Earlier this year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) published results of vehicle headlight evaluations. The results-which showed that very few headlight systems were rated as acceptable or good-were widely reported in the mass media (including USA Today, NPR, Consumer Reports, and dozens of others). The cause of the poor ratings was not addressed in the IIHS report or in the media coverage that followed.
Using the data and protocols provided by the IIHS, Dr. John Bullough, Director of Transportation and Safety Lighting Programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center, performed some post-hoc analyses of the data. He shows in his editorial that demerit scores tended to be better when headlights were aimed properly and worse when the headlights were aimed either too high or too low. Though not all of the variation in headlight performance can be attributed to aiming, it was a meaningful factor. The number of systems rated as acceptable or good would have doubled if they had been correctly aimed. It may not be obvious to consumers that having their headlights properly aimed on a regular basis can influence nighttime driving safety. Properly aimed headlights influence safety by improving driver visibility and minimizing glare to oncoming vehicles.
This research was published by the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society of North America) (http://www.ies.org/)journal, LEUKOS. The IES is the recognized technical authority on illumination. For over 100 years; its objective has been to communicate information on all aspects of good lighting practice to its members, to the lighting community, and to consumers, through a variety of programs, publications, and services.
* Read the full article online here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15502724.2016.1204798
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