Canada feds to consider limits on overly bright headlights
A Canadian local government body has echoed complaints and called for legislation similar to that of U.S. lawmakers regarding headlight brightness, according to the National Post.
Video shared by the news publication of a January Vancouver City Council Standing Committee on Policy and Strategic Priorities meeting includes Councillor Sean Orr’s motion to ask the federal government to mandate headlight limits. He called it a “practical public safety motion” to reaffirm the council’s commitment to safe and walkable streets.
“My mom absolutely hates these [head]lights when driving,” Orr said. “From what I’ve been hearing, a lot of people do as well. I remember asking myself when I first started seeing these headlights on the road, ‘How is this legal?’ I do realize this is outside our jurisdiction, but I think it’s important to advocate to the federal government.
“These LED headlights and HID headlights, especially on oversized vehicles, are very common in Vancouver and are linked to reduced nighttime visibility, delayed reaction time, and risk of collisions. These impacts are felt not just by drivers but also by cyclists, pedestrians, seniors, and people with vision impairments who are especially vulnerable to glare.”
The motion asks that the federal government, through Transport Canada and the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, establish clear and enforceable limits on headlight brightness, beam patterns, and mounting heights.
The council passed the motion unanimously and sent the request to Transport Canada. It will also be presented at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference this June, according to the National Post.
The National Post writes, “Advancements in North American headlight technology over the last decade or so have undoubtedly made the roads safer for drivers. The trade-off, unfortunately, is that many drivers on the receiving end of increasingly bright low-beam lamps have never felt less safe.”
Last August, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA-03), and a former co-owner of an automotive repair shop, brought the issue as an amendment to the FY26 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. It requests a study of the impact of headlight brightness and a maximum brightness standard.
“There is a plague in this country of headlight brightness,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in July. “It is shockingly bright. If you look back to halogen light bulbs, you’re reaching somewhere around 700 to 1200 lumens. New LED technology, these sons of b—s get to 12,000 lumens.
“It is not a binary choice between walking around in the dark and the fire of 1,000 suns. The standards on this have not been reformed since before I was born.”
Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR-03) agreed with Gluesenkamp Perez.
“It can cause some safety problems, and frankly, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to ask the Department of Transportation to shed a little light on this subject for us,” he said.
The committee voted unanimously in favor of the bill. In its July 21 report to the House, it stated, “The committee urges the Secretary of Transportation to report to Congress on what gaps may exist related to the impact of the brightness of low beam headlamps on the vision and safety of drivers, pedestrians, and other road users, including the effect of varied terrain, including hills and curves.”
The report accompanied H.R. 4552, which was placed on the Union Calendar.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that while complaints from drivers about blinding headlights are on the rise, glare causes only “a tiny fraction” of nighttime crashes.
“Although it can certainly be uncomfortable, headlight glare contributes to far fewer crashes than insufficient visibility,” said IIHS President David Harkey in an October press release. “But that doesn’t mean reducing glare isn’t an important goal — one that we’ve long focused on at IIHS in addition to improving illumination.”
IIHS found that the percentage of nighttime crashes caused by headlight glare changed little over the past decade. And from 2015 to 2023, it was cited as a factor in only one or two out of every 1,000 nighttime crashes across 11 U.S. states, according to IIHS’s new study.
Out of around 24 million total crashes, fewer than 150,000 were caused by glare, and a far smaller fraction were both coded for glare and occurred at night, according to IIHS.
Federal headlight standards for minimum and maximum brightness haven’t changed since 1997; however, IIHS says its headlight rating program, which began in 2016, has helped to drive a shift in headlight design in the U.S. fleet.
Instead, IIHS recommends high-beam assist, which automatically switches headlights from high beams to low beams when it detects vehicles ahead, to mitigate drivers neglecting to dim their lights manually. The IIHS rating program awards bonus points for this feature.
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