The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, is an independent safety body known for their comprehensive crash testing of new cars. More recently, they introduced the headlight test as a critical component of the overall evaluation. The organization used to publish graphics showing how vehicles’ headlights performed in various conditions. Now, it seems that information is no longer available. A TFLcar reader alerted us to the omission, and was curious — as we were — why it went missing.
For the time being, you will not be able to see any information from IIHS headlight testing beyond a brief description explaining how a car performed. When we asked the IIHS why they removed the headlight test graphics, this was their response:
“Thanks for contacting us and for the feedback. We will take your comments into account as we continue to refine the presentation on our new website.”
Up until a few weeks ago, you could readily access graphics like the one above. In that specific infographic, the IIHS showed the headlight performance of the 2019 Toyota RAV4. Now, there are just a few sentences describing how the RAV4’s headlights performed in low beam and high beam tests.
A small, but useful piece of information
It’s a minor piece of information for most, but it is important to know how well headlights work in newer cars. Actually being able to see where your headlights fall short can make a big difference when it comes to the sort of driving you may need to do at night.
The conventional 2019 Toyota RAV4’s standard headlights failed to hit any of the optimal targets for IIHS testing. It’s one thing to read a description, but the graphic above helps put the headlights’ shortfalls into perspective. It is important to stress that these results do not refer to the RAV4 Hybrid, as the IIHS has yet to publish those results.
As it stands, the IIHS has recently been working on updates to their website. This information could just be temporarily unavailable, but the organization did not immediately address our questions as to whether they were going to bring the graphics back with a clear answer.
We’ll provide updates if we get any more information.
