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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

#71

Post by xani_ »

phpisthebest wrote: post #25
KerrAvon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 govern…

> 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.

Uh, no. There should be a well defined standard of what light need (light area of this and that size or at least this or that brightness) and can't (low beams blinding oncoming traffic etc.) do, then let market work within those limits. The regulation should have actual research behind it. Pretty sure that's how it works in EU.

Then if for some reason behavior of lights on the market causes problem, the standard should be revised, not ban random products for breaking rules that haven't existed when they were created (aside from extreme cases I guess)

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

#72

Post by synaesthesisx »

Side note - anyone know how to disable the annoying auto high beams on their vehicle? A recent software update appears to automatically toggle high beams (which do turn off when oncoming traffic is detected however it's still annoying). It appears that this is necessary for autopilot to function - so I can't just disable it entirely :/

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

#73

Post by xani_ »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #19
ianai wrote: post #3

I really hope this means the cameras/monitors instead of mirror wings get allowed asap.

Yes, but can we place monitors in the center instead. Putting it where mirrors are normally seems more distractive (disclaimer: I haven’t tried them)

Finally use for those massive screens used as dash

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

#74

Post by xani_ »

pxtail wrote: post #14
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.

This feature is available indeed but I don't feel like it's significant improvement - sensors are too slow to react, too imprecise and moreover drivers seem to rely on them too much, are lazy and don't care about others - for example high beams should be disabled before other car ahead is already visible on winding road , same goes for hills and multitude of other various scenarios where automatic sensors and softwar…

Hell, some SUV low beams are already obnoxious at night...

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

#75

Post by karlshea »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #52
midoridensha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American drivers are simply too stupid to be able to comprehend curved mirrors, so the US government bans them on US-spec cars, and instead you get flat mirrors with a warning message.

How does that make sense? Flat mirrors don't make things look further away than they are.

The passenger side is curved, the driver’s side isn’t. But the passenger side curved mirror isn’t the same type of curve as Euro cars so there are still bigger blind spots, and the driver’s side blind spots are huge.

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

#76

Post by Hamuko »

jve wrote: post #57
kube-system wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, being in the US I have not used these headlights, but I sure hope the image in the article is a bad rendition. That beam is way too narrow.

They are pretty wide, don't worry. But there are other safety features for AUDI: - Night vision camera. Not sure if it will actually help - you don't watch your screen when driving. - BEEP, BEEP when approaching an invisible human/animal that is too close to car on a lane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0wwcU_IlwE

>Not sure if it will actually help - you don't watch your screen when driving.

Some cars can actually use the headlights to highlight a detected person, so you can see it out of your window. Not sure if it works for animals though.

https://youtu.be/C5fl7r-E9WY?t=132

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

#77

Post by waste_monk »

andrewflnr wrote: post #36
bb88 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…

Of course they're doing something dystopian instead of something sensible. But yes, I bet even better standardized road markings would be a huge help for self driving cars. I wonder if there's something stupid simple like a paint additive that would make it easy for machines to track. Magnetic beads?

Then any asshole could mix up their own magnetic bead paint and cause havoc.

Probably no more than someone painting their own road lines or putting up fake signage does now [1], but if you want something that's better than what we currently have it would need to not only be both machine and human readable, but also authenticated.

I always thought it would be quite neat to have those portable roadside displays you see for roadworks and so on also communicate map and driving data (cryptographically signed by your local council or dept of transport). So you might get a sign that says "roadworks ahead, please slow down" for human drivers, and the radio beacon would communicate a change of speed limits inside a certain geo-bounded area that would cause self-driving vehicles to slow down. Or similar stuff for "bridge out ahead, turn around now" causing navigation to reroute.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/17/laying-a-trap-for-self-dri...

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

#78

Post by sgtnoodle »

bb88 wrote: post #32
prng2021 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes drunk driving is a terrible problem but beta testing software on the open road is not the only option available. It's nothing but irresponsible. Here's one of many: use sensors and AI in the car to detect a drunk person behind the wheel. This is HN so I'm sure readers could spend 10 seconds and think of numerous ways this could be accomplished and many otherideas about what could be done when a drunk driver is de…

You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…

Lane following isn't the hard part of self driving cars. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it's a minor detail compared to everything else that also needs to work reliably 99.9999% of the time.

Such infrastructure might help make cheaper lane-keep assist as standard options I guess, but at the speeds where it matters for safety, you need significant look-ahead on the trajectory rather than just lateral position error.

I suppose you could go crazy and embed some sort of NFC into the road, so that it can communicate the lane geometry. It could probably even be done cleverly, perhaps by embedding multiple nails and encoding curvature in their spacing, or maybe in the orientation of the magnetic flux itself. All that to avoid some front facing cameras and image processing, though, that can also be used to detect other cars and pedestrians.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

midoridensha wrote: post #40
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.

American drivers are simply too stupid to be able to comprehend curved mirrors, so the US government bans them on US-spec cars, and instead you get flat mirrors with a warning message.

[deleted]
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