Headlights In Spotlight As Insurance Industry Group Raises Standards

To help avoid deadly accidents, an insurance industry group raised standards for headlight performance, reducing the number of vehicles that earned its highest safety rating.

Only 38 models were awarded the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's designation of Top Safety Pick+, down from 48 on the initial list for the 2016 model year. Toyota led all automakers with nine winners. Honda Motor Co. was second with five. Among U.S. automakers, only three models earned the distinction.

To get the designation, the industry-funded organization now requires "acceptable" or "good" results in its engineers' tests of how well roads can be seen in the dark. IIHS said it added the evaluation because government standards allow for wide variation in real-world performance and about half of traffic deaths happen in the dark or at dawn or dusk. Automatic emergency braking and good ratings on crash tests are included in consideration.

BLOOMBERG