New two-wheelers must run automatic headlamps on low beam from April 2028

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has published draft changes to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules that would force automatic headlamps on new two-wheelers to operate only in passing beam, the low-beam setting, from 1 April 2028. Today's Automatic Headlamp On systems can run high or low beam depending on where the rider leaves the switch. Under the draft, once AHO is active the lamp stays on low.

Intensity limits fall with the same paper. Two-wheeler high-intensity lamps would drop from 1.5 lakh candela to 1 lakh. Cars would drop from 2.25 lakh candela to 1.5 lakh. Colour temperature would be capped at 6,500 Kelvin. The ministry notes that white light at higher colour temperatures produces more glare. Mounting height for main-beam lamps would have to match the height already set for passing-beam lamps, so a high beam cannot sit in another driver's eyes simply because it was bolted higher.

Heavy vehicles are in the same draft. Medium-distance (Type II) and long-distance (Type III) buses would need genuine reflective markings around the rear from 1 April 2028, with updated rules on size and placement. Tractors and construction vehicles are listed among the other targets of the visibility package. The draft is open for objections and suggestions.

The ministry has spent years asking riders not to use high beam in towns. The draft is an admission that the asking did not work. AHO was meant to make motorcycles visible in daylight. Riders discovered that the same circuit could keep a high beam on after dark. Oncoming traffic paid for that habit. Night crashes in which a rider or driver is blinded by a white LED cluster are now common enough that the rulebook is being rewritten around the lamp, not the lecture.

April 2028 is far enough out that factories can retool. It is also far enough that two more festive seasons of new bikes will leave the line under the old rule. Those machines will still be on the road in 2032. The draft does not retrofit the existing fleet. Enforcement after 2028 will be a type-approval problem at the factory gate, not a traffic-police problem at a checkpoint, unless states add a separate check for converted lamps.

Candela numbers sound abstract until they hit a windscreen. Cutting a car lamp from 2.25 lakh to 1.5 lakh candela is a one-third reduction at the source. The 6,500 Kelvin cap pushes against the blue-white aftermarket projectors that have spread through city fleets. If the final notification keeps those three figures, the change that a rider will notice first is not the AHO logic. It is that the bike coming the other way is a little less painful to look at. That is the entire point of the file.