AAA Headlamp study

Ls400

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/tran...-pedestrians-aaa-says/?utm_term=.68ed152f2588

https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...eadlights-safety-concern-aaa-says/2263336002/

Total replacement with certified aftermarket parts: $131 to $259; achieves 90 percent performance.

Total replacement with non-certified aftermarket parts: $104 to $190; achieves 83 percent performance.

Professional restoration: $77; achieves 70 percent performance.

Do-it-yourself restoration: $21; achieves 70 percent performance.

Source: AAA tests

Do these figures seem valid? Seems like replacement of old headlamps with aftermarket parts is better than restoring OEM lamps??
 
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-Virgil-

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Ls400

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Fixed the link.

Seems odd that AAA would come out and declare their professional headlight restoration service as equivalent to someone doing it themselves, and as decidedly inferior to new lamps, even if they are cheap aftermarket ones.

Unrelated: no comments on the Calcoast report I posted a week ago?
 
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Magio

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They go into indepth detail on the methodology behind the test. In particular the "research report" under "additional resources". There is also a video of them restoring the headlights. I think its interesting to note that the OEM lamp failed the high beam portion of the test.
 
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-Virgil-

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Issues in the article:

...light output between 83 and 90 percent, however these did fail to meet certain requirements for light intensity and were found to be more likely to produce glare for oncoming traffic. Restoring headlights, while the most cost effective option, offered less of an improvement in light output than replacement. Professional and DIY restoration returned light output back to approximately 70 percent. Both restoration methods, however, produced more glare than is acceptable according DOT criteria.

So yeah, there's more light coming out the front of a new aftermarket headlamp versus a cloudy original, but the new aftermarket headlamps flunk even the super-lax performance requirements, both in terms of minimum allowable seeing light and maximum allowable glare. This is not news.

And the word aim doesn't appear even once in the whole article?! Inexcusable on its face, but it also screws up the rest of their "percentage improvement" claims, because as far as we know the lamp aim was random.

Issues in the research report:

"During testing, a re-aim of up to one half degree is permitted to improve performance relative to testing criteria" No, the allowance is for 0.25°, that is one quarter of a degree. Yes, it matters!

"Cutoff:European compliant headlamps have a very distinct cutoff line. U.S. compliant lamps have a more diffuse cutoff line that is intended to provide less distractive glare to oncoming traffic." No. The only purpose of the cutoff is to allow for visual/optical aim of the lamp. It is not designed, intended, or capable of reducing "distractive glare" (which isn't actually a term).

"New bulbs were used for both high beam and low beam operation in each individual headlamp" Whoah, big problem here. They used a different bulb for each individual headlamp? That completely invalidates their comparison. In real headlamp tests, an "accurate rated" bulb is used, that is a bulb that has been very carefully made and measured to be dead-nuts accurate in each and every item of the specification. This is done to eliminate the effects of bulb-to-bulb variability in service. For just one example, most bulb types have an output specification tolerance of +/- 15%, that is a 30% range of allowable intensity from the bulb. And then there are all the physical specs for dimension, placement, and orientation of the filament. There are allowable tolerances to account for the realities of mass production, but those tolerances must be factored out when comparing headlamps or the comparison's no damn good. Sheesh, this is a really super-basic screwup. They got access to a goniophotometer but didn't use accurate-rated bulbs...or even just use the same bulb across all tests?! Unreal.

Quite a bit of random mess in the data charts. For example, on page 29 they have a compliance table for the Chevrolet Malibu high beam. Down at the bottom they seem to have added up all the candela values obtained at the various test points, to arrive at a total of 207,290.7 candela. What on earth they think this total represents is not clear; in fact it represents nothing. That's not how any of this works, you don't say "Well, this headlamp produces let's see here, 10 thousand over here, 20 thousand down there, 5 thousand here in the middle, 200 up there, so that's a total of...OK, this headlamp produces 35,200 candela". That doesn't mean anything, but the next few tables make it look like they're using it as the basis for comparing "how much light" the various aftermarket lamps put out compared to the genuine part. That's still not how any of this works. You can integrate lumens in a beam pattern, but you can't add up candela values like this, because some of the individual-point values are higher and some are lower. I suppose you could use this total-it-up type of method if you were comparing the same lamp with various degrees of lens degradation (or dirt on the lens, or bulb age, etc). But across different lamps? No way!

"Aftermarket headlamps performed well, but did not comply with all test points. In particular, aftermarket headlamps did not meet FMVSS-108 specification for cutoff and failed to meet all requirements for intensity. Failure to meet specification for cutoff is interpreted to mean the headlamp is more likely to produce glare to oncoming and/or preceding traffic." That's probably true, and it also makes them difficult or impossible to aim correctly.

Not a single, solitary word about lamp aim, either, except to note that a laser was used to set up the lamps on the goniophotometer. Yes, that's standard practice, but it doesn't really translate to lamp aim on the vehicle...and all this talk in the article and report about DIY headlight replacement or having a shop do it, and the only mention of aim is at the end of the research report, as a buried mention that the dealer might charge to aim the lamps. Argh!

Don't get me wrong, the big-picture conclusion is absolutely correct: headlamp lens deterioration kills. That's not a secret or anything. Some years back one of the major OEM headlamp suppliers made a highly detailed presentation on that subject at the DVN Workshop in Detroit. I don't mean to seem like I'm trashing the whole report, but they sure shot themselves in the foot with some basic methodology screwups. If they hadn't, this report's conclusions would certainly be much more valid, much more fine-grained, much more realistic, and (perhaps most importantly) much more usable to try to convince the regulators at NHTSA to do something about the problem (toughen up the regs).

LS400 said:
Seems odd that AAA would come out and declare their professional headlight restoration service

AAA doesn't offer a headlight restoration service. You can't bring your car to AAA and have them restore the headlights.
 

Ls400

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"During testing, a re-aim of up to one half degree is permitted to improve performance relative to testing criteria" No, the allowance is for 0.25°, that is one quarter of a degree. Yes, it matters!

"New bulbs were used for both high beam and low beam operation in each individual headlamp" Whoah, big problem here. They used a different bulb for each individual headlamp? That completely invalidates their comparison. In real headlamp tests, an "accurate rated" bulb is used, that is a bulb that has been very carefully made and measured to be dead-nuts accurate in each and every item of the specification. This is done to eliminate the effects of bulb-to-bulb variability in service. For just one example, most bulb types have an output specification tolerance of +/- 15%, that is a 30% range of allowable intensity from the bulb. And then there are all the physical specs for dimension, placement, and orientation of the filament. There are allowable tolerances to account for the realities of mass production, but those tolerances must be factored out when comparing headlamps or the comparison's no damn good. Sheesh, this is a really super-basic screwup. They got access to a goniophotometer but didn't use accurate-rated bulbs...or even just use the same bulb across all tests?! Unreal.

The AAA paper talks about having contracted a professional lab. Do you find it odd that a "professional" lab would be able to test lamps for compliance but forget that the allowance is 1/4th of a degree, and not 1/2 of a degree? And odd that the lab AAA consulted didn't suggest perhaps using the same bulbs across all the lamps, or commissioning a run of precisely made bulbs?



Quite a bit of random mess in the data charts. For example, on page 29 they have a compliance table for the Chevrolet Malibu high beam. Down at the bottom they seem to have added up all the candela values obtained at the various test points, to arrive at a total of 207,290.7 candela. What on earth they think this total represents is not clear; in fact it represents nothing. That's not how any of this works, you don't say "Well, this headlamp produces let's see here, 10 thousand over here, 20 thousand down there, 5 thousand here in the middle, 200 up there, so that's a total of...OK, this headlamp produces 35,200 candela". That doesn't mean anything, but the next few tables make it look like they're using it as the basis for comparing "how much light" the various aftermarket lamps put out compared to the genuine part. That's still not how any of this works. You can integrate lumens in a beam pattern, but you can't add up candela values like this, because some of the individual-point values are higher and some are lower. I suppose you could use this total-it-up type of method if you were comparing the same lamp with various degrees of lens degradation (or dirt on the lens, or bulb age, etc). But across different lamps? No way!

"Aftermarket headlamps performed well, but did not comply with all test points. In particular, aftermarket headlamps did not meet FMVSS-108 specification for cutoff and failed to meet all requirements for intensity. Failure to meet specification for cutoff is interpreted to mean the headlamp is more likely to produce glare to oncoming and/or preceding traffic." That's probably true, and it also makes them difficult or impossible to aim correctly.

Would you say that aftermarket headlamps have perhaps made strides in quality in recent years? The last major report about aftermarket lamps that is often cited here notes that not only did the tested "CAPA certified" lamps fail photometrically, but also failed physically. In this report, it seems that the aftermarket lamps do acceptably, with one aftermarket (non-certified too) lamp actually performing better than the OEM lamp with regard to meeting the standards for each test point.


Don't get me wrong, the big-picture conclusion is absolutely correct: headlamp lens deterioration kills. That's not a secret or anything. Some years back one of the major OEM headlamp suppliers made a highly detailed presentation on that subject at the DVN Workshop in Detroit. I don't mean to seem like I'm trashing the whole report, but they sure shot themselves in the foot with some basic methodology screwups. If they hadn't, this report's conclusions would certainly be much more valid, much more fine-grained, much more realistic, and (perhaps most importantly) much more usable to try to convince the regulators at NHTSA to do something about the problem (toughen up the regs).

Can we expect any change in the near and medium-term future, either voluntarily by manufactuers or by governmental edict? I wouldn't want to, you know, add a $10,000 option package on a car for adaptive driving beams in the future and end up with severely deteriorated lens after a few years of ownership.


AAA doesn't offer a headlight restoration service. You can't bring your car to AAA and have them restore the headlights.

I should have wrote AAA approved car service centers.
 
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-Virgil-

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The AAA paper talks about having contracted a professional lab.

It is difficult to believe a professional lab wouldn't have used accurate-rated bulbs for tests like these. Maybe AAA insisted on using new separate bulbs, but there wouldn't have been any valid reason for it.

Do you find it odd that a "professional" lab would be able to test lamps for compliance but forget that the allowance is 1/4th of a degree, and not 1/2 of a degree?

Could also be a mistake in the writeup.

Would you say that aftermarket headlamps have perhaps made strides in quality in recent years?

The best of them might not be as bad as they were, but there's a constant stream of new bottom-end players, so on average I'd estimate they're as bad or worse. And the claim that the CAPA or NSF "certification" means anything substantial is unfortunate. They should have looked deeper into that.

Can we expect any change in the near and medium-term future, either voluntarily by manufactuers or by governmental edict?

Probably not, but the lenses on LED headlamps should hold up better, because they run cooler.

I should have wrote AAA approved car service centers.

Ha ha...good one! :) (I'm assuming you're making a funny)
 

Ls400

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The best of them might not be as bad as they were, but there's a constant stream of new bottom-end players, so on average I'd estimate they're as bad or worse. And the claim that the CAPA or NSF "certification" means anything substantial is unfortunate. They should have looked deeper into that.

Agreed, they should have looked deeper into that. I don't mean to argue with you here, but AAA does note that they only selected the cheapest certified and non-certified aftermarket lamps, so perhaps the worst of the worst on the aftermarket has been getting better? Then again, the issue merits further investigation, and just how AAA found these aftermarket units is also probably of interest. I could probably go to eBay and find non-certified aftermarket units that are WAY cheaper than if you just looked on reputable sites dedicated to selling aftermarket parts...or if you just used a body shop's computer system to lookup aftermarket parts...


Probably not, but the lenses on LED headlamps should hold up better, because they run cooler.

Do you anticipate regulations being put into place with regard to controlling glare on old, hazed up adaptive driving beam headlamps? I know that the point of ADB is "glare-free high beams all the time" but I note also that haze can exacerbate glare. I mean I don't see how an ADB system can compensate for glare due to foggy lights but I'm just curious what experts think when 15 years after the first ADB systems are approved and all the first generation systems are foggy and hazy and presumably spitting light out in a less-than-controlled manner.

Ha ha...good one! :) (I'm assuming you're making a funny)

Wait, I don't get it.

PS...I feel like a petulant 5-year-old because I've PM'd you and asked you publicly before...but I'd love to read your comments on the Calcoast report I posted. I haven't gotten any replies from you so I don't know if it's because you haven't seen my messages or something else. I know that we've had problems with PMs not being delivered in the past...
 
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-Virgil-

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Do you anticipate regulations being put into place with regard to controlling glare on old, hazed up adaptive driving beam headlamps?

No, unfortunately.

Wait, I don't get it.

There are AAA-approved hotels and AAA-approved restaurants, too. They don't offer headlamp refurbishment services, either. "AAA approval" for an auto shop does not mean AAA provides anything at all in the way of services or service protocols, and it does not mean AAA receives a cut of any work done at the shop.
 

Alaric Darconville

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There was a study done by a few years ago by a well-respected researcher at a global headlamp supplier, demonstrating an unbroken evidentiary chain between headlamp lens degradation and pedestrian deaths. But that's a real study, not fluff by AAA to just generate more brand-awareness and to attempt to bolster their credibility.

Oh, and PLEASE no more USA Today links. I thought my browser was going to catch on fire from all the scripts and ads and popups and mouse-outs and full-page ads covering everything, begging me to subscribe!
 
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Ls400

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There was a study done by a few years ago by a well-respected researcher at a global headlamp supplier, demonstrating an unbroken evidentiary chain between headlamp lens degradation and pedestrian deaths

Somewhat unrelated, but do you expect the advent of adaptive driving beams to have a knock-on effect on pedestrian deaths and road safety in general? What I mean is often times when I'm driving down the highway, I notice that some cars have powerful low-beams that penetrate much further than my headlamps can. Even if they're driving behind me or to the side, their low beams penetrate much further, and I feel that it probably makes things safer for me since I can see further with the assistance of their lights. Could we one day reach a critical number of cars with ADB that increasing the percentage of cars in the fleet with ADB wouldn't have much of an effect on accidents that were caused by poor lighting, sort of like what happened with vaccines? Not everyone needs to be vaccinated now (although everyone should) because if 97 out of 100 people are vaccinated against a disease--that means that 97 of these 100 people won't be able to host that disease and that the disease practically doesn't exist.
 
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alpg88

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maybe, or most likely 70% is due to reflectors degrading as well as lens, you can polish the lens but can't make reflectors new again. even lousy aftermarket will have better reflective surfaces when new. their beam however is whole different story.
i had 87 delta 88 that had glass lenses, it never got yellow like polycarb lenses get after 5+ years. it was still clear after 10+ years, but reflectors looked like dull side of kitchen foil.
 
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