This is cool. Do any of you European folk know if they manufacture aftermarket replacement kits for models that didn't come equipped with them originally? I'd like to order some of these. ____________________________________________________________ U.S. safety agency OKs advanced headlights for road use David Shepardson Published 3 Mins Ago Reuters WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday said it was moving to allow advanced headlights known as "adaptive driving beams" to be used in vehicles on U.S. roads that could help prevent nighttime crashes. The agency said it was acting in response to a petition filed by Toyota Motor Corp in 2013 to allow the lights, which provide more illumination than existing lights without a glare to oncoming motorists by using additional sensors to automatically adjust lights. NHTSA said the lights offer "potentially significant safety benefits in avoiding collisions with pedestrians, cyclists, animals, and roadside objects." The headlights have been permitted in Europe for more than a decade and are also allowed in Japan and other countries. Volkswagen AG also petitioned the agency in 2016 to allow the lights on its Audi A7 luxury cars, while BMW AG filed a similar petition in October 2017. The problem is the lights ran afoul of U.S. rules setting maximum levels for lower beams. The agency noted that a recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that pedestrian deaths in dark conditions jumped 56 percent from 2009 to 2016. At the direction of Congress, NHTSA began extensive research into the impact of nighttime glare in 2005. Unlike some automatic headlight switch systems from high to low beams, adaptive headlights use sensors, cameras, data-processing software, and headlamp hardware to detect oncoming and preceding vehicles and automatically adjust the headlamp beams. NHTSA said it was proposing to amend current safety rules that bar the advanced lights but will still need to take final action after receiving public comment before it can the allow the new lights. The agency is also proposing new test measures to ensure the systems work as planned. NHTSA has received thousands of complaints about headlight glare over the last four decades, especially with the introduction of halogen lights in the late 1970s and then high-intensity discharge lights in the 1990s. (Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
You would only be able to get an aftermarket kit if your car make and model is available with such adaptive headlights. The entire headlight fixtures need to be replaced, and additional sensors, such as cameras, mounted in your car.
Yeah I looked into it, I kinda figured that would be the case but ya never know, there's always some company making aftermarket accessories you'd never have thought possible. Those things are sweet. Thanks.
Its not a Kia you milkjug-head-looking ass clown... its a LeBaron Convertible. Picked it up from RRY16. Its a classic now.
In future cars will this functionality be implemented in a different way. You can see in the BMW video that motors are used to swivel the headlights horizontally and vertically (at 00:25 in the video). Future headlights will be built up of a matrix of LEDs and each of them will be controlled individually. By controlling each LED, and a proper lens in front of each LED, can the shape of the light beam be adjusted. No more mechanical motors needed. However, using an LED matrix is rather expensive so this will initially only be available on high end cars.
Amazing stuff. Actually without any moving parts like BMW's with the servo-motors, mass produced these things should get cheap pretty fast.
The last time I looked into this it was the LEDs which formed the bottle neck, and caused the entire system to be expensive. The temperatures to which these LEDs get exposed to, combined with the required long lifetime, and high power, made it a challenge for the LED manufacturers. Admittedly, that was the situation a few years ago and I don't know the LED development progress since then.