Every buyer knows what five stars means. Almost nobody knows their car's headlight rating, and it is scored by a different organisation on a different scale.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rates headlights on how far they actually throw light on a real road, with a penalty for glare into oncoming traffic. Across 1,643 rated vehicles in our records, 542 come back Poor or Marginal. That is one in three.
| Headlight rating | Vehicles |
|---|---|
| Good | 665 |
| Acceptable | 436 |
| Poor | 309 |
| Marginal | 233 |
This is the only safety test where a third of the market fails and nobody talks about it. It is also the only one measuring a system you use every single night.
The worst brands are all American
Grouping by brand, among those with at least 25 rated vehicles, produces a list that does not look like any other safety ranking.
| Brand | Rated vehicles | Poor or Marginal | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cadillac | 28 | 22 | 79% |
| Chevrolet | 90 | 69 | 77% |
| GMC | 46 | 35 | 76% |
| Jeep | 78 | 48 | 62% |
| Chrysler | 35 | 21 | 60% |
| All rated vehicles | 1,643 | 542 | 33% |
The top five are General Motors and Stellantis brands, and they sit at double the market rate or worse.
Part of the explanation is trim structure. For years the good headlight on an American SUV was an option bundled into an expensive package, while the base car kept a cheaper unit. IIHS rates what is fitted, so a model can appear twice with two different results.
That is worth knowing when shopping used: the rating you read may belong to a trim level the car in front of you does not have.
It is getting fixed, quickly
The unusual thing about this measure is how fast it has moved.
| Model year | Rated | Poor or Marginal |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 161 | 24% |
| 2023 | 181 | 15% |
| 2024 | 198 | 14% |
| 2025 | 202 | 8% |
| 2026 | 181 | 9% |
Bad headlights fell from a quarter of rated cars to under one in ten in four model years. Very little in vehicle safety improves that fast.
The reason is that IIHS made a good headlight rating a requirement for its Top Safety Pick award. Manufacturers chase the award, and the cheapest route to it was fixing the lights.
Why this matters more on a used car
The improvement is concentrated in new cars. A 2018 or 2019 vehicle was built before the award rules tightened, and the odds of a Poor rating on it are much closer to the old numbers than the new ones.
Nothing about the rating appears in a listing, and nothing about it changes with mileage — it is a property of the design. If you are buying a used SUV from one of the brands above, the rating for that exact year and trim is worth two minutes of checking before you test drive it after dark.
Frequently asked questions
Are headlight ratings part of the five-star safety score?
No. Star ratings come from NHTSA and measure crash performance. Headlights are rated separately by IIHS, on how far the beam reaches on a real road and how much glare it throws at oncoming drivers. A car can hold five stars and still have headlights rated Poor.
Which brands have the most Poor-rated headlights?
Among brands with at least 25 rated vehicles: Cadillac at 79% Poor or Marginal, Chevrolet at 77%, GMC at 76%, Jeep at 62% and Chrysler at 60%, against a market rate of 33%.
Do two cars of the same model always share a headlight rating?
Not necessarily. IIHS rates the hardware fitted, and for years the better headlight was bundled into an option package. The same model year can carry two different ratings depending on trim, so check the rating against the specific trim you are looking at.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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