TROY, Mich.—Despite US dominance in so many different areas of technology, we’re sadly somewhat of a backwater when it comes to car headlamps. It’s been this way for many decades, a result of restrictive federal vehicle regulations that get updated rarely. The latest lights to try to work their way through red tape and onto the road are active-matrix LED lamps, which can shape their beams to avoid blinding oncoming drivers.
From the 1960s, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards allowed for only sealed high- and low-beam headlamps, and as a result, automakers like Mercedes-Benz would sell cars with less capable lighting in North America than it offered to European customers.
A decade ago, this was still the case. In 2014, Audi tried unsuccessfully to bring its new laser high-beam technology to US roads. Developed in the racing crucible that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the laser lights illuminate much farther down the road than the high beams of the time, but in this case, the lighting tech had to satisfy both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, which has regulatory oversight for any laser products.
The good news is that by 2019, laser high beams were finally an available option on US roads, albeit once the power got turned down to reduce their range.
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Corey Hart warned us about this
My brothers overpriced merc uses lighting zones and detection to turn off areas to not blind incoming traffic. Cool, but I’m sure within 5 years these extremely complex lighting arrays will fail and not be user serviceable, other than full headlight cluster replacement for $4k.
More complexity, shorter life. You’ll get what you want but only because it suits the makers.
It’s great, I drive a low compact and because all the boomers around me drive a small tractor/SUV, whenever dusk starts I can look at all the pretty hard white suns behind me instead of traffic. If a big cargo truck can have good unobtrusive lighting, your fucking boomer mobile should also be able to have it, so it’s basically a choice made in the factory: yeah this will fucking blind everyone on the road, but think of how COOL it will look guys!!
Working for the FDA sounds like it could be pretty lame until you learn about Laser Division.
I think part of the problem, at least for me, is the horrible color temp most headlights use now. They are like 6500k hard white light instead of something less harsh like around 3500k that is much easier on the eyes. I think the only criteria they care about when selecting LEDs is maximum brightness so this is what we get.
