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ATLANTA — Imagine if you could drive at night with your high beams on all the time, bathing the road ahead in bright light but without ever blinding other drivers.
Adaptive driving beam technology has been available for many years in other parts of the world including Europe, China and Canada, but not in the United States.
It can shape the light coming from headlights rather than scattering it all over the road. If there's a car coming in the other direction, or one driving ahead in the same lane, the light stays precisely away from that vehicle. The rest of the road is still covered in bright light with just a pocket of dimmer light around the other vehicles. This way a deer, pedestrian or bicyclist by the side of the road can still be seen clearly while other drivers sharing the road can see, too.
In America, the closest technology is automatic high beams, a feature available on many new cars that automatically flicks off the high beams if another vehicle is detected ahead. But that still means driving much — or most — of the time using only low-beam headlights.
U.S. auto safety regulations enacted in 2022 intended to allow adaptive headlights, something for which the auto industry and safety groups had long been asking for. But, according to automakers and safety advocates, the new rules make it difficult for automakers to add the feature. That means it will probably be years before adaptive headlights are widely available in the U.S.
Some ADB headlights work like digital projectors, using a million or more LED pixels to project light patterns on the road. Even in the U.S., some Mercedes vehicles can project symbols like arrows or lines on the road to guide drivers.
Allowed, but not yet
Until two years ago, U.S. auto safety regulations, written for traditional headlights, simply didn't allow for adaptive headlight technology at all. Light beams wrapping around other vehicles just wasn't something the regulations could encompass so the technology wasn't allowed here by default.
That changed in early 2022 when, after a decade of work on it, America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized regulations for adaptive beam headlights. But because the U.S. regulations are so different from those in other countries, with requirements so difficult to meet, automakers still can't offer it here. It will be years before they can offer new, redesigned adaptive headlights that meet the standards, auto industry sources say.
Some automakers and safety groups, including Ford, Volkswagen and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, are asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reconsider the regulations to make it easier and less costly to offer these headlights in the U.S.
"We wish the regulation and testing would be reconsidered to accept what has already been proven around the world, including Canada, and was informed and supported by (the Society of Automotive Engineers)," Audi, VW's luxury brand, wrote in a statement provided to CNN. "Many of our cars equipped with matrix design or digital matrix design lighting on U.S. roads today could be turned on to provide greater visibility and less glare which means safer roads for all."
'To get the technology into the market'
Safety regulations usually differ somewhat between different global markets. But, since adaptive beam headlights have been in use in other countries for a decade or more, automakers hoped that regulations would allow their introduction in this country without requiring major equipment changes, according to various industry sources.
"We had hoped it would have been a software change, and then it would have been rather quick to get the technology into the market," said Michael Larsen, Technical Fellow for Exterior Lighting at General Motors and a member of the Society of Automotive Engineer's lighting committee. "But when everyone started really looking at this complicated regulation, you just couldn't get there from here."
The safety administration's rules require the adaptive headlights to respond extremely swiftly after detecting another vehicle within reach of the lights, much faster than other standards require in the EU and Canada. Also much faster than a human could switch off an ordinary high beam headlight. Rules also dictate extremely narrow lines between bright and dark regions.
Vision versus glare
Safety administration regulations prioritize reducing any potential to cause glare for other drivers. Glare has been a particular concern for many years since new vehicles have brighter headlights that can sometimes cause discomfort or even temporarily blind other drivers.
"We should be focused on what we can do to improve visibility," said Matt Brumbelow, a senior research engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "We know that low visibility causes crashes and what adaptive does is maximize visibility, seeing light, while still preventing glare."
The U.S. regulations also limit the amount of light the headlights could put out while also not allowing them to reduce lighting as much they could in other situations, said Brumbelow.
"(We could) reduce glare compared to a high beam, and even lower than what a current low beam would be," he said, "but we can get more light out there everywhere else."
