Only Half Of Vehicle Headlights Tested By IIHS Got A Good Rating — And That's Not Great

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently released its safety ratings, with headlight scores being one of the prominent factors, alongside other parameters such as front and side collision tests, front crash prevention, and pedestrian safety assessments. The headlight tests were first introduced in 2016 and have since become an important factor in determining the safety ratings for each vehicle. Vehicles are given four grades for these tests — Good, Acceptable, Marginal, and Poor — and only 51% of the cars tested in 2025 received a Good rating, while 16% have either a Marginal or Poor rating. 

While this is a sizable jump from the 2016 tests, when only one car received a Good rating, the importance of cars with quality illumination can't be overstated. According to IIHS, vehicles rated Good for headlights experience 19% less single-vehicle crashes at night and 23% less nighttime pedestrian collisions than those rated Poor. To evaluate the effectiveness of a vehicle's headlights, each car undergoes a rigorous test in which it makes multiple approaches using both low and high beams on straight and curved roads, while engineers measure how far the headlights illuminate the road. Headlights lose points if their high or low beams don't illuminate the road properly or if the low beams create glare for oncoming drivers, while vehicles with high-beam assist get fewer low-beam demerits in the IIHS tests.

Oncoming glare is tested to ensure the vehicle illuminates the road effectively without blinding drivers coming from the opposite direction, which is a particular concern with modern LED headlights. IIHS reports a noticeable improvement in this parameter, as only 3% of vehicles in the 2025 test showed excessive glare, while 21% did so in the 2017 test. 

IIHS has been pushing manufacturers to improve headlight quality, announcing in 2019 that vehicles receiving a Good or Acceptable rating would be eligible for their Top Safety Pick+ award. Various parameters are taken into consideration, as mentioned above, and test vehicles are set to the factory headlight settings, noting that most owners do not adjust them. IIHS does not consider the type of headlight bulb — whether halogen, LED, or HID — when determining ratings, but instead evaluates how effectively the headlights illuminate the road. Of the cars that received the Top Safety Pick+ award — the highest safety accolade from IIHS — some of those that earned a Good headlight rating include the Honda Civic, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Kia Telluride, Audi Q6 e-tron, Mercedes-Benz GLC, and Tesla Model Y. 

Several other Top Safety Pick+ vehicles have some trims with a Good rating, while other trims receive only an Acceptable rating due to different headlight setups. Examples include the Toyota Tundra, Mazda 3, Hyundai Tucson, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Mazda CX-70, and Audi Q7. Higher trims don't necessarily perform better than lower ones in this test. Take the C-Class, for example. The standard trim, without the Digital Light package that includes curve-adaptive lights, fares better on straight roads, while the Digital Light package provides better illumination around curves. The standard trim, however, received a Good rating, compared to an Acceptable rating for the trim with the Digital Light package. On the other hand, a few models struggled significantly in the headlight tests, with the Tesla Cybertruck, Cadillac Lyriq, and BMW i4 all earning a Poor rating.