Blinded by the light: Are safety standards outdated for modern headlights?

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Uh, in the old days they used to use incandescent lamps. That's the same as the tungsten lamps that we used to have I don't know maybe 20 years back. And then they moved on to halogen lamps and the current technology is around light emitting diodes.

[00:00:13]And these lights are all white lights but they're different in in sort of the spectrum which is the different amounts of different amounts of red, blue, and green that make up that white light. And that's that's changed. That's one of the big things that's different. Modern lights are also much smaller so we perceive them as being brighter because there's the same amount of light coming off of a smaller smaller area.

[00:00:34]And have we changed the regulations around these newer headlights?

[00:00:39]Uh, I as far as I know the regulations haven't changed for a bit. They've been adjusted for power perhaps but not for the fact that the spectrum of these lights uh we often think of these in terms of the color temperature. That part's different. That hasn't been incorporated into the new standard I think. Why not?

[00:00:56]Um, that's a good question. I think I think the standards are a little bit slow to move and there's perhaps a bit of disconnect between what we perceive and what instruments can measure and that may be part of the things why from a standards perspective the lights may still satisfy what's kind of required but we are perceiving them as brighter.