What You Need To Know About The Headlight Leveller Feature In Your Car
Highlights
- Still wondering what that tiny knob with numbers 0 to 5 is for?
- Find out how headlight levelling can help your driving experience.
- Understand the scenarios where it can be useful.
Headlights are one of the most important components of your car when it comes to safety while driving at night. Not only do they provide you with visibility of the road ahead but they also let the cars around you know of your presence. However, there are cars that are driving in the opposite direction as well. And their visibility can suffer a lot when your headlights are aligned at higher angles. To counter this, it's always a good idea to switch to the lower beam but sometimes even that doesn't do the trick and that's when the headlight leveller feature comes into the picture.
High beam vs low beam?
Let us first understand the different scenarios for which high beam and low beam headlights are designed. High beam headlights, as the name suggests, throw light far away on the road to allow you to spot things way ahead in time. But that also means that these lights hurt the visibility of the people driving in the opposite lane. They are hence recommended for driving in rural areas or small roads that feature little to no light. When the road is amply lit, one must always switch to low beam since this provides adequate lighting without reducing the visibility of oncoming traffic.
What's the need for a headlight leveller?
Now suppose you're driving with your headlights on low beam but with a heavy load in the trunk of your car. Or when the back seat is in full occupancy. That will put more weight on the rear suspension and tilt the car lower at the back. What this will also mean is that the headlights will tilt ever so slightly up. Not only will this lead to bad lighting on the road immediately ahead of you, but it will also cause blinding for oncoming traffic.
How to use a headlight leveller?
The headlight leveller feature is operated using a rotary knob that's usually placed on the right-hand side of your steering column. This knob will have numbers 0 to 5 on it. When your car's balance is optimal and you're driving alone, make sure that the knob is set to zero. However, when the need comes to use the headlight leveller feature, try rotating the knob to different degrees to set the exact balance that suits you.
Automatic headlight levellers
Some cars don't let you worry about headlight levelling at all. Their automatic headlight leveller feature allows them to do the job for you. These cars make use of sensors to gauge the impact the weight on the back is having on the rear suspension. If that impact goes beyond a certain mark, these cars automatically tilt the headlights down to the optimal level.
Those are all the basics that you need to know about the headlight levelling system of your car. Once you start using it at the right moments, you will notice that it really makes a big difference to your driving experience.