The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has once again toughened its equipment requirements for new vehicles to earn it’s coveted Top Safety Pick and Top Safety Pick + honors for 2020. For Top Safety Pick +, headlights rated Good or Acceptable must be standard on all trims, not just available on up level models. IIHS measures how headlights illuminate the road ahead on straights as well as in left and right curves. As justification for the move, IIHS notes that about half of all fatal accidents occur after dark and many on unlit roads. IIHS began rating headlights for 2016 models. In addition, IIHS now also requires a car to have well rated vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-pedestrian crash preventive systems like automatic emergency braking to go on their Top Safety Pick list. The addition of the pedestrian protection is new for 2020. More details as well as a list of recently tested vehicle headlights are available at the IIHS website.