---
title: "NHTSA Reopens Headlight Rules Frozen Since 1997, Hands It to a Committee"
description: "The federal brightness standard hasn’t moved in 29 years; the fix now runs through an 18-seat negotiating panel with no deadline."
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-08T20:26:13Z
modified: 2026-10-09T10:43:37Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/nhtsa-reopens-headlight-rules-frozen-since-1997-hands-it-to--b11f8a
language: en
tags: ["regulation", "infrastructure", "safety", "automotive", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# NHTSA Reopens Headlight Rules Frozen Since 1997, Hands It to a Committee

*The federal brightness standard hasn’t moved in 29 years; the fix now runs through an 18-seat negotiating panel with no deadline.*

By Luis Goa · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/nhtsa-reopens-headlight-rules-frozen-since-1997-hands-it-to--b11f8a

## In brief

- NHTSA will rewrite FMVSS 108, the US headlight standard unchanged since 1997, via negotiated rulemaking
- Transportation Secretary Duffy will name up to 18 committee members; comments due Nov 9, 2026
- AAA survey: 60% of 1,092 drivers call glare a problem after dark; 73% of those say it’s worsened in a decade
- IIHS: glare is a contributing factor in just 1–2 of every 1,000 nighttime crashes, 2015–2023 across 11 states
- IIHS’s voluntary rating program already cut excessive-glare systems from 21% (MY2017) to 5% (MY2026)

The federal standard setting minimum and maximum headlight brightness in the United States has not changed since 1997. On October 6, 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would rewrite it, along with the rest of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108, through negotiated rulemaking — a process NHTSA has not used for vehicle lighting in more than 25 years, according to the agency’s [press release](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/modernize-outdated-vehicle-lighting-standards).

Negotiated rulemaking is not a proposal followed by public comment, which is how NHTSA normally writes a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. It is a committee first. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will appoint up to 18 members drawn from headlamp manufacturers, parts suppliers, safety groups, research institutions and engineering societies, under a [Federal Register notice](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/08/2026-20648/notice-of-intent-to-establish-a-negotiated-rulemaking-advisory-committee-for-vehicle-lighting) published October 8 (Docket NHTSA-2026-1981, 91 FR 64462). “Today’s standards do not allow automakers to deploy the latest safety-improving lighting technologies, so we are bringing key experts and stakeholders together to modernize our standards and address potential causes of glare,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in the release. Comments on the committee’s scope and membership, and nominations to sit on it, are due November 9, 2026.

**How negotiated rulemaking works** NHTSA's process for rewriting FMVSS 108

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| NHTSA notice of intent *(Oct 8, 2026)* | Secretary names up to 18 members |  |
| Secretary names up to 18 members | Committee seeks consensus *(charter runs up to 2 years)* |  |
| Committee seeks consensus *(charter runs up to 2 years)* | NHTSA drafts proposed rule *(only if consensus reached)* |  |
| NHTSA drafts proposed rule *(only if consensus reached)* | Public comment period |  |
| Public comment period | Final rule |  |

![How negotiated rulemaking works. NHTSA's process for rewriting FMVSS 108](https://rews.cc/img/1f01b2c20bf823222940a57e5a041daed5717958.webp)

Based on [NHTSA, Federal Register notice 2026-20648](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/08/2026-20648/notice-of-intent-to-establish-a-negotiated-rulemaking-advisory-committee-for-vehicle-lighting)

The committee’s charter caps its work at two years unless Duffy renews it, and only after it reaches consensus does NHTSA draft a notice of proposed rulemaking around that text, which then goes through ordinary notice-and-comment. No deadline is set for a final rule. The last time NHTSA ran this process for lighting, a Negotiated Rulemaking Advisory Committee convened after a June 1995 notice of intent, produced a proposal by July 1996, and a [final rule](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-03-10/html/97-5723.htm) in March 1997 — the same standard now being reopened, in roughly 21 months from notice to rule. Whether an 18-member committee negotiating LEDs, glare and global harmonization in 2026 moves on anything like that schedule is the first number worth watching.

The slower, ordinary path is visible in the one piece of FMVSS 108 NHTSA already rewrote this decade. Toyota petitioned for adaptive driving beam headlamps, which use a matrix of individually steerable LEDs to keep high beams on everywhere except the patch of road occupied by another vehicle. NHTSA agreed in 2013 to start the rulemaking, took five more years to publish a proposed rule in 2018, and did not finalize it until February 2022, [Ars Technica reported](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/10/feds-get-ready-to-rewrite-car-headlight-rules/) — nine years from petition to [final rule](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/22/2022-02451/federal-motor-vehicle-safety-standards-lamps-reflective-devices-and-associated-equipment-adaptive) for a single, narrowly scoped amendment.

Even with that rule in force, adaptive beam headlamps sold in the US underperform the same hardware sold in Europe, per Ars Technica’s reporting — Audi’s SUVs are the example cited. The gap traces to how the two regimes certify a car. Europe uses type approval: a manufacturer submits physical samples to a government authority, which tests them and approves the model for sale. The US uses self-certification: a manufacturer tells NHTSA its car meets the standard and faces sanctions later if that turns out to be false. NHTSA decided Europe’s glare test was too subjective to hand to manufacturers grading their own homework, and wrote a stricter test of its own — which is also why global harmonization is on this committee’s agenda.

## The complaint versus the crash data

The political pressure behind the rewrite is a perception problem, and AAA put numbers on it in March. In a [survey](https://southjersey.aaa.com/news/6-10-drivers-struggle-headlight-glare) of 1,092 US drivers fielded February 5–8, 2026 on a probability-based panel (margin of error ±4 points at 95% confidence), 60% said glare after dark is a problem, and of those, 73% said it has gotten worse over the past decade. 92% blamed oncoming headlights specifically; about a third also cited glare in their own mirrors. Glare hit some drivers harder than others: 70% of drivers who wear prescription glasses reported it versus 56% who don’t, 70% of women versus 57% of men, and 66% of drivers of non-pickup vehicles versus 41% of pickup drivers, whose higher seating position apparently helps. Age and driver height showed no statistically significant link. AAA’s Greg Brannon attributed the trend to “new headlight technologies and taller vehicle designs.”

The crash record does not back the scale of the complaint. IIHS principal research engineer Matthew Brumbelow analyzed police-reported crashes across 11 states from 2015 to 2023 — about 24 million crashes, fewer than 150,000 of them flagged for glare of any kind, day or night — and found glare a contributing factor in 1 or 2 of every 1,000 nighttime crashes, a rate that peaked in 2015 and bottomed out in 2020, with no steady rise over the decade that would track rising complaints.

[![Glare and headlights: The basics and beyond](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mOxntGta6rc/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOxntGta6rc)

IIHS principal research engineer Matthew Brumbelow discusses the institute’s research into whether headlight glare is contributing to more nighttime crashes. Video: IIHS · YouTube

Meanwhile the industry has already been improving headlights without a federal mandate, pushed by IIHS’s own voluntary rating program, which it started in 2016 by testing illumination reach and glare on a straightaway and on curves in both directions. In that first round, only 1 of more than 80 headlight systems tested earned a “good” rating. For model year 2026, [IIHS reports](https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/headlights), 46% of systems tested earned “good” and 17% were rated marginal or poor for inadequate visibility, excessive glare, or both. The share with excessive glare specifically fell from 21% in model year 2017 to 5% in model year 2026.

**Excessive glare, down before any new rule** Share of IIHS-tested headlight systems rated excessive for glare, by model year

|  | Excessive glare (%) |
| --- | --- |
| 2017 | 21 |
| 2026 | 5 |

Source: [IIHS](https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/headlights)

IIHS’s separate analysis of police-reported crashes found vehicles with “good”-rated headlights involved in 19% fewer nighttime single-vehicle crashes and 23% fewer nighttime pedestrian crashes than vehicles rated “poor” — a gap the federal brightness standard played no part in closing, since that standard has not moved since 1997. The insurer-funded rating program, not FMVSS 108, is doing the work the new committee is nominally being convened to do.

What the committee actually has on its agenda, per NHTSA’s notice: rules for LEDs, ambient-light sensors, automatic high beams and replaceable light sources; headlamp height and aim; test procedures for plastic optics and replacement lenses; and alignment with international lighting regulations. Glare itself — what causes it and how to test for it without the subjectivity NHTSA cited when it rejected Europe’s method in the 2010s — sits inside all of those, not as a line item of its own.

Nominations and comments close November 9. After that, the committee has up to two years to agree on anything, before NHTSA has even drafted a rule for the public to comment on. The last time this process ran on vehicle lighting, it took 21 months from notice of intent to a signed final rule. The adaptive-beam rule that followed the ordinary process took nine years for one feature. The number to watch is how many of those 18 seats go to lighting manufacturers and how many to the safety researchers whose own data says glare isn’t the biggest problem industry already has underway fixing on its own.

## See also

- [Rationale and supporting work for IIHS headlight test and rating protocol](https://www.iihs.org/media/9b0f599a-7a50-4bc4-b8d2-1cf6b52a128a/VSGFZg/Ratings/Protocols/current/headlight_rationale_supporting_work.pdf) — iihs.org · The technical basis for IIHS's glare and illumination test, cited above