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The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

arstechnica.com

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Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#21

Post by eek2121 »

deburo wrote: post #7

Available in Europe since 2006? Why did it take so long for the US? LED lightbeams are so bright that high beams is almost unbearable for opposing cars.

The article is old...dates back to February of this year. Furthermore, I haven't done digging, but I'm still trying to figure out the difference between what my older vehicles do vs what European cars do. It seems to be related to beam detection. My vehicle already dynamically adjusts brights vs "low" beams: if a car comes over a hill, it "sees" the headlights and shifts to normal beams.

My car does a pretty decent job and turning off the brights when it detects oncoming traffic, is this February Ars article saying that is illegal? If so, why is it implemented in my Hyundai?

EDIT: Based on other replies it appears that the difference is beam forming, exactly. My headlights simply go from high to low. It is pretty odd that would be banned, but okay.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#22

Post by KerrAvon »

deburo wrote: post #7

Available in Europe since 2006? Why did it take so long for the US? LED lightbeams are so bright that high beams is almost unbearable for opposing cars.

US auto regulations are extremely conservative on the lights/signals front, have been for a long time. Some European car designs in the late 20th century were compromised when brought to the US because the headlights had to be made worse (in an aesthetic sense) even though there was no safety reason to do so — Citroen DS was one of these.

And maybe they should be conservative, but I don’t see how anyone can argue that it should take a decade to get something like this approved (or formally rejected).

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#23

Post by KerrAvon »

deburo wrote: post #8
deburo wrote: post #7

Available in Europe since 2006? Why did it take so long for the US? LED lightbeams are so bright that high beams is almost unbearable for opposing cars.

It seems to have been approved only in 2018 in Canada, so we aren’t much better. It’s also merely an (apparently expensive) option, so we will have to live with careless high beam drivers for a while.

4 years ago is 4 years better

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#24

Post by KerrAvon »

citronaut wrote: post #2

I wonder when this will begin to be implemented or “turned on“ with vehicles that already have compatible hardware. The article was written in February of this year and to my knowledge my car (2022 Tesla 3) has the hardware but the feature is not enabled. Are any production cars in the US fully using this tech?

Huh, very recent Model 3’s might indeed have the necessary technology. Too bad Tesla’s support sucks so bad you can’t email them to ask — maybe try Musk on Twitter?

https://rechargd.com/which-tesla-has-matrix-led-headlights/

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#25

Post by phpisthebest »

KerrAvon wrote: post #22
deburo wrote: post #7

Available in Europe since 2006? Why did it take so long for the US? LED lightbeams are so bright that high beams is almost unbearable for opposing cars.

US auto regulations are extremely conservative on the lights/signals front, have been for a long time. Some European car designs in the late 20th century were compromised when brought to the US because the headlights had to be made worse (in an aesthetic sense) even though there was no safety reason to do so — Citroen DS was one of these. And maybe they should be conservative, but I don’t see how anyone can argue tha…

Largely because we have a long inversion of how government should act. It should have never needed "approval" in the first place, government should have to seek to ban a product, innovation, etc based on their own creditable evidence the thing is dangerous.

Instead of we adopted a position of everything being illegal until it is blessed by a regulator, it is in effect guilty until proven innocent.

Until we put government back into the proper context innovation will continue to be inhibited

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#26

Post by garaetjjte »

throwaway019254 wrote: post #13

Can anybody tell me why all my US cars have enormous side-mirror blind spot? And my European cars have none? Are European cars using curved mirrors to prevent this? Edit: I just googled it. That’s exactly what’s happening - EU side mirrors are curved to prevent blind spots.

"Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear"

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#27

Post by Havoc »

Spivak wrote: post #5

If you haven't yet seen the more advanced version of this where the cameras detect rain/snow and don't illuminate it's some god damn magic that makes "barely able to see in a snowstorm" to "there's a snowstorm?"

Is that commercially available already? Anywhere I mean

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#28

Post by bb88 »

prng2021 wrote: post #4

We allow companies like Tesla to jeopardize people's lives while the company beta tests "full self driving" technology, but are scared of allowing proven safe technology like adaptive headlights.

You're not wrong, the NHTSA should be more proactive on this stuff.

But to be fair, drunk drivers kill 28 people a day in this country, or about 10k people per year. 3k people die at signalled intersections every year, or around 8ish per day.

While Tesla shouldn't be beta testing their self driving cars on public roads, it's clear that human behavior and existing road design is still vastly worse.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#29

Post by Nomentatus »

There's an ancient history here which is both amusing and worth noting. For most of a century, starting way back, the US patent office would receive constant applications describing simple automatic dimmers from inventors who had never considered what would happen if two cars equipped with such dimmers approached each other at night. A whole lotta flickering is what would have happened. This literally became the paradigm for the patent office of what a trash invention that shouldn't be given a patent looked like.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#30

Post by stubish »

eek2121 wrote: post #21
deburo wrote: post #7

Available in Europe since 2006? Why did it take so long for the US? LED lightbeams are so bright that high beams is almost unbearable for opposing cars.

The article is old...dates back to February of this year. Furthermore, I haven't done digging, but I'm still trying to figure out the difference between what my older vehicles do vs what European cars do. It seems to be related to beam detection. My vehicle already dynamically adjusts brights vs "low" beams: if a car comes over a hill, it "sees" the headlights and shifts to normal beams. My car does a pretty decent j…

There are also lights that adjust to slopes, such as when cresting a hill. And lights that greatly widen at T and cross intersections so you can see where you are going to turn too.
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