The headlights in your car brighten your way at night and make your road trips safer by ensuring that you’re seen by other drivers. Do you want to know more about automotive illumination? Let’s go find out more about this vital component of your vehicle below.

Staying Visible

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety revealed that headlamps varied in their ability to illuminate the road. As of 2023:

• About 43 percent received a Good rating. Vehicles with such ratings had 19 percent fewer single-vehicle crashes at night and 23 percent fewer pedestrian nighttime crashes than vehicles with Poor headlamps ratings.
• About 29 percent were rated Marginal because they didn’t provide enough visibility and/or produced too much glare from the low beams for oncoming drivers. They reduced nighttime single-vehicle crashes by only 10 percent.

While low visibility is known to lead to crashes, too much glare is concerning, but there is no evidence that the glare by itself leads to crashes. For the 2023 model year, only 5 percent of headlight systems suffered from excessive glare compared to 20 percent in 2017.

What Types Are There?

The following types of headlights are in most modern cars, with some models using different kinds, depending on the trim you select.

Headlamp Housing

The housing contains headlight bulbs and comes in the following types.

• Reflector Headlights appeared in all cars until 1985 and are still the most common type, with the bulb housed in a bowl-like container with mirrors to reflect light. They are inexpensive.
• Projector Headlamps are common in many new models and use a similar housing with reflecting mirrors. However, their magnifying-glass lenses increase brightness for better illumination.
• H4 Conversions rely on typical reflector housing but contain an H4 dual filament bulb that can be replaced because the case is not sealed. This allows for easy bulb changes.

Number of Bulbs

There are two kinds of headlamps, based on the number of bulbs that fit in the headlight housing.

• Quad Headlamps have two bulbs in each housing. They provide plenty of light, with one bulb producing a low beam and another producing a high beam.
• Non-Quad Headlights have one bulb in each housing.

Bulb Type

The following describes the bulbs used in headlights.

• Halogen Headlamps: The most common type in modern cars and use halogen gases inside the bulb instead of a vacuum. They are inexpensive and produce a brighter beam.
• High-Intensity Discharge (HID): These headlamps are also known as Xenon headlights, because they use Xenon gas inside a glass tube to produce light from an arc of electric power. The white-blue light they create is very bright, and the bulbs last longer.
• Light-Emitting Diode (LED): Headlamps turn electricity into light using diodes, making them efficient and compact while turning on and off quickly.
• Laser Headlamps: This represents the latest technology and produces light that is 1,000 times brighter than LEDs while requiring only as much power as the LEDs.

If you have any questions or want to see these headlights in action around Orange County, contact any of the dealers at Beach Boulevard of Cars in Huntington Beach.