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Audi, as one of the luxury brands BBA, is often known as the "lamp factory", which is precisely its excessive pursuit of light source technology research and development. However, Audi's flagship Q8 model did not receive the highest rating of IIHS in the United States because of its poor headlight performance.

According to the overall evaluation results of the new Audi Q8 officially released by the American Highway Safety Insurance Association (IIHS), due to the poor performance of headlights, Audi Q8 was not selected for the highest safety level of Top Safety Pick+ (Top Safety Choice +) and was only evaluated by Top Safety Pick (Top Safety Choice).

The main reason is that the headlights of Audi Q8 Premium and Premium Plus were rated as Poor (poor). Because the vehicle produces too much glare in the near light, resulting in a lack of visibility in sharp corners, the performance of projection headlights using high-definition matrix technology cannot reach the Acceptable (general) rating.

IIHS believes that Audi Q8 performs well only on the near light straight, but in the use of far and near light bends, Q8 is generally or poorly visible in terms of left and right slow bends or left and right sharp bends. Obviously, this result made the lamp factory Audi a bit of a blow to the face.

In fact, in the IIHS lighting test, not only Audi Q8 did not get the highest rating, such as the new Audi A7 in the IIHS overall rating is also Top Safety Pick (top security choice), because the new A7 is also equipped with modified headlights. However, it is worth noting that the Audi A6 received the best rating in the IIHS, offering three different headlight options, two of which were rated Good (good) and the entry-level configuration was Acceptable (General).

Of course, in the collision test of IIHS, all the collision tests of Audi Q8 got Good (good) evaluation. Including the most difficult co-driver small angle offset crash test, the car also received a Good (good) rating.

In fact, in addition to the Audi brand, Volvo, which has a high safety reputation in the industry, also failed to achieve TSP+ results at IIHS because of poor lighting performance. For example, the new S60 and XC40 received a full excellent rating in any crash-related test in the IIHS, but lost the best rating because of the lack of lighting.

In contrast, IIHS listed 23 of the safest Top Safety Pick+ models in the United States in 2020, mostly from mid-range brands. There are even five "civilian" models such as Mazda 3, Mazda 6, and CX-3 and CX-5, which account for 20% of all excellent models, only pursuing balance in all aspects, but not too much in lighting design.

According to a test manager of IIHS, "with the development of the automobile era, more and more car companies in order to pursue high-quality lighting effects and make vehicles more attractive, but often ignore the most basic safety issues, even if many consumers do not choose leather seats and skylights and other configurations, do not want to lose high-quality lighting effects."

Obviously, in the evaluation of automobile quality and safety, not only the body safety, but also the lighting safety is very important. As a result, IIHS issued a statement on Feb. 18, claiming that half of all fatal car crashes in the United States occur in the dark.

IIHS, whose full name is Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (American Highway Safety Insurance Association), as a non-profit organization, has always been regarded by the industry as the most stringent and authoritative crash testing organization in the world, so it has become an important part of the world safety standards. In pursuit of more stringent testing standards, IIHS also increased its rating on the range of headlights after 2016.

It also reflects that in the future car safety issues, car companies should make more improvements in both active and passive safety, even the well-known Volvo cars. At the same time, with the development of the automobile industry, more and more testing standards will be introduced to strengthen the improvement of automobile safety.

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