General Motors reminded about 740,000 vehicles, all 2010-2017 GMC grounds, to light up after discovering that the vehicles did not comply with federal regulations. The motorist formally requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration return the error in June 2019, but NHTSA rejected GM’s petition to leave the grounds unchanged. Now affected terrain owners will receive instructions from April 23 to bring their SUVs for a fix.
The reason behind the recall is that the reflector housings of the headlights cause them to be too bright – up to a factor of three at certain designated test points, according to the NHTSA. GM argues in its petition to ignore the issue that the brightness is “insignificant as far as the safety of the vehicles is concerned” because the excessively lit areas do not affect the drivers or the oncoming motorists, except in conditions of dense fog or Snow.
GM also added that it has removed old-stock ground lights with upgrades that would correct June 2019 lighting, fixing the issue on all units that need a full replacement of the housing. In addition, the company pointed out that it has fixed the issue for newer model years of the field and it has only received a formal complaint about the lights since the field began its production. But the recall was still ordered by the NHTSA, which said that “… the absence of a complaint does not mean that there were no security issues, nor that there will be no security issues in the future.”
A GM spokesman said so Detroit News that the company is still researching a fix. With the new homes already being produced that “add graining to the unstable reflective surfaces, preventing the reflections that are the cause of the problem”, it is possible that the memory repair will be somewhat similar.
This recall comes on the heels of another headlight-target recall affecting the Lamborghini Huracan and the announcement that carmakers will finally be allowed to bring adaptive lights into the state, after nearly a decade of discussion. As someone who sometimes drives an extremely low car and constantly finds himself blinded by oncoming traffic – even when I’m driving my abandoned trail-runnin truck – I hope this signals a new era to truly see the road at night when it is oncoming traffic.
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