Headlight failure or clouding on the 2014 Chevrolet Impala
2 fires 2 of the 18 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When headlight failure or clouding gets reported
Owners of the 2014 Chevrolet Impala report headlight failure or clouding at a median of 20,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 10,000 miles and a quarter after 40,000 miles, from 13 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 16th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 5,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 55,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 46,850 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
Reports bunched into a band this tight usually mean the component has a life of its own: it goes at roughly the same mileage regardless of who owns it.
69% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7,000 miles | 9,000 miles | 20,000 miles | 40,000 miles | 53,850 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $150–$1,800 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 16 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 100 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 53; the 2014 has 18. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Tl* the contact owns a 2014 chevrolet impala. The contact stated that while driving at night and operating the head lights, both the low beam and high beam lights would not illuminate far enough in front of the vehicle to see on coming vehicles. The vehicle was taken to the dealer but no defect was diagnosed. The contact was informed that the head lights were operating as normal. The manufacturer was notified. The failure mileage was 9,000. Pam
Tl* the contact owns a 2014 chevrolet impala. The contact stated that while driving at night and operating the head lights, both the low beam and high beam lights would not illuminate far enough in front of the vehicle to see on coming vehicles. The vehicle was taken to the dealer but no defect was diagnosed. The contact was informed that the head lights were operating as normal. The manufacturer was notified. The failure mileage was 9,000. Pam
I would like to report an ongoing issue with 2014 chevrolet impala ls with standard halogen headlights. The headlight beam, both on high and low beams, is very narrowly focused so that the area immediately to the front and side of the car -- and objects located there -- cannot be easily seen. The lights work reasonably well on a straight road, but when executing a turn the path of the car is in near darkness as the lights point a narrow beam to the outside of the turning radius. This makes driving at night on anything other than straight highways an unnerving experience and I believe represents a serious safety risk both to the vehicle occupants, and to pedestrians who might be outside the headlights' narrow focal range. Note that the headlight design is unusual for a halogen unit in that it uses a shutter to switch between high and low beam, a feature more commonly found with HID lights. By comparison, our 2003 chevrolet malibu, with separate reflector based halogen low and high beams, does a much better (I believe much safer) job of illuminating a broad area in front of and to sides immediately in front of the vehicle. I think…
Also reported on the 2014 Chevrolet Impala
Other electrical problem
Other steering problem
Other driver assistance problem
Lane keep or steering assist fault
Other brake problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 18 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does headlight failure or clouding happen on the 2014 Chevrolet Impala?
Across 13 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 20,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 10,000 miles and a quarter after 40,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is headlight failure or clouding on the 2014 Chevrolet Impala?
18 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed