HEADLIGHTS THAT WON’T BLIND ONCOMING DRIVERS
Highway safety agency will allows ‘adaptive’ driving beams on new vehicles
Anyone who has ever been temporarily blinded by high-beam headlights from an oncoming car will be happy to hear this.
U.S. highway safety regulators are about to allow new high-tech headlights that can automatically tailor beams so they focus on dark areas of the road and don’t create glare for oncoming drivers.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it issued a final rule allowing what’s called “adaptive driving beam headlights” on new vehicles. It will go into effect when published in the Federal Register in the next few days.
The headlights, commonly used in Europe, have LED lamps that can focus beams on darkness such as the driver’s lane and areas along the roadside. They also lower the intensity of the light beams if there’s oncoming
traffic. Camera sensors and computers help determine where the light should go.
“This final rule will improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists by making them more visible at night, and will help prevent crashes by better illuminating animals and objects in and along the road,” the agency said in a news release on Tuesday.
The new rule, which was supported by the auto industry, comes as the safety agency grapples with a dramatic rise in traffic deaths nationwide.
The number of U.S. traffic deaths surged in the first nine months of 2021 to 31,720, the government reported Tuesday, keeping up a record pace of increased dangerous driving during the coronavirus pandemic.
The estimated figure of people dying in motor vehicle crashes from January to September 2021 was 12% higher than the same period in 2020. That represents the highest percentage increase over a nine-month period since the Transportation Department began recording fatal crash data in 1975.
The tally of 31,720 deaths was the highest nine-month figure since 2006.
Sam Abuelsamid, principal mobility analyst for Guidehouse Research, said the new lights will show up in higher-cost luxury vehicles at first, but will spread to more mainstram vehicles as the price of the technology falls.