US Clears Way For Automakers To Install Smart Headlights (axios.com) 39
The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a rule Tuesday to allow adaptive driving beam headlights, or smart headlights, in the U.S. Axios reports: The technology, which relies on sensors and LED light, will help prevent crashes by allowing better illumination of pedestrians, animals and objects without impairing the visibility of drivers in other vehicles, NHTSA said. Adaptive driving beam headlight systems, which are commonplace in Europe and Canada, automatically focus beams on darker, unoccupied areas while reducing the intensity of illumination in times of oncoming traffic. Research released in 2019 by the American Automobile Association found that European vehicles with adaptive headlight systems increase roadway lighting by as much as 86% when compared to U.S. low beam headlights. "NHTSA prioritizes the safety of everyone on our nation's roads, whether they are inside or outside a vehicle. New technologies can help advance that mission," said Steven Cliff, NHTSA's deputy administrator, in a statement. "NHTSA is issuing this final rule to help improve safety and protect vulnerable road users."
Re: Thats not a dupe (Score:5, Funny)
In this case it is necessary. Remember, cars have two headlights, and need one story for each headlight.
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The Picard sees FOUR LIGHTS!
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Gul Madred is the fifth light. I think the Cardassians method to evaluate a species ability to use symbolism and metaphor may not be the best tactic.
Unless there was a fifth light behind Gul Madred, every time he asks the question his head is in the middle of the lights, he could be blocking one.
Re: Thats not a dupe (Score:2)
This is such good news, it deserves a dupe.
Lots of bills doing the same! (Score:3, Funny)
They introduced a bill for this just yesterday!
Yes, we know (Score:2)
Dup. Again. You posted this story yesterday. Do the eds ever read their own site anymore?
Re: Yes, we know (Score:3)
Even back when they did, dupes were still common. I still remember kdawson, whose half-assed (or half-baked and/or high as a kite?) hipster activism was a constant annoyance, made dupe posts all the time. Though when slashdot was under dice management, and I doubt they ever read the site as to them it was just a tech job advertisement platform that the rank and file ran, (and gave up after they failed in their attempt to turn it into an app) the dupes were very rare.
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There has been a spate of them this last couple of weeks, though.
How about not a dupe story (Score:3)
With all the duplication of stories of late, would it have been too difficult for the editors to post a non-dupe story? Such as how Tesla vehicles are deciding to brake to a stop on their own [cnn.com]. On the highway. 354 times in nine months [marketwatch.com].
Or the story of how Tesla's full "self-driving" took control of the car, drove it into the opposing lane of oncoming traffic, and refused to give back control to the driver [aol.com]?
If we're talking about "smart" headlights, which will cost the consumer more in both repairs and replacements than traditional headlights, why not talk about "smart" cars and how they're trying to kill people.
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I can't see that it specifically says it was the opposing lane in that aol.com article. It says "wrong lane" and "incorrect lane". It might have been the opposing lane, but none of the language in the article makes it clear. Also, the driver there is claiming that the Tesla "forced" itself into the lane against him trying to steer it back. I can imagine the steering wheel sensors that detect the driver's hands failing, but is the steering wheel actually strong enough that the driver can't overpower it? It s
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It says "wrong lane" and "incorrect lane". It might have been the opposing lane, but none of the language in the article makes it clear.
There was another article I was looking for but couldn't find, where the driver stated the vehicle drove into the oncoming lane of traffic and would not relinquish control to him. This article [futurism.com] has a short clip showing the driver and car fighting for control. This would be similar to the scenario I was talking about, though it is not the specific one I mentioned. This sto [jalopnik.com]
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There was another article I was looking for but couldn't find, where the driver stated the vehicle drove into the oncoming lane of traffic and would not relinquish control to him. This article [futurism.com] has a short clip showing the driver and car fighting for control. This would be similar to the scenario I was talking about, though it is not the specific one I mentioned.
Time reference next time please. I just watched that whole video watching for them fighting for control and could not find anywhere that the driver did not win easily. The car was obviously obsessed with driving into those posts on some of the right lanes and tried to multiple times and the driver easily corrected it except for that first time where he didn't expect it and didn't try to correct. Of course, in that video I assume the sensors were able to tell that he was fighting the wheel and relinquish con
Idiots With High Beams On All The Time (Score:2)
Will it fix this problem?
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Impossible to fix the idiots by definition.
It might dim their headlights automatically though.
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People rejoice at this, but will they still rejoice when all manner of repairs to their headlights cost $800 or more?
Cracked? $800.
Burnt out? $800.
Smashed to bits in accident? $800.
"Its always $800. Thats what the unit costs, and the unit is mandatory to be street legal"
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It seems like a mixed bag. The good(?) news is they are probably complete assemblies that just slot into the car, and probably with a mounting geometry that produces good aim by default. And if they're LEDs, they probably last the life of the car barring physical damage. They'll be expensive, but some kind of standardization will take hold and keep a lid on the price over time.
On my last car with halogens, bulb replacement was a PITA. I managed to break the reflector getting a bulb unstuck and had to bu
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I love the idea, but worry about LED on-off cycles leading to early death of the parts. Let's hope the car manufacturers do a better job than LED lights in my house.
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I've got the stock LED headlamps in my 2019 Subaru and no issues so far. They turn to follow cornering, and do automatic high/low beam switching.
I'm with you on home LED bulbs, but AFAIK the explanation for their abysmal failure rate isn't the LED itself, but the transformer/rectifier circuit to get the power down to lower DC voltages.
I kind of wonder why there hasn't been a new lighting standard developed that moves the transformer/rectifier circuit out of the bulb and into the wall/ceiling box or fixture
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Europe reporting in. (Score:2)
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Europe here. You'll be able to tell who has these fitted, they'll be the oncoming vehicle blinding you. They're not a good thing.
Not here. We already have enough idiots with misaligned lights, high beams on because their low beams are burnt out or they are just brain dead booger heads.
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Europe here. You'll be able to tell who has these fitted, they'll be the oncoming vehicle blinding you. They're not a good thing.
I was thinking just from the summary that it sounds like these will blind pedestrians.
Play this to the end please (Score:2)
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Hopefully a graceful degradation mode is engineered into the light, meaning that if the mechanism starts to fail, then it will revert to cross-lights and not full-power lights?
Any automotive engineers out here to confirm?
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While you are on the subject of what engineers CAN do... why arent you thinking about all the ways they can make things bad on purpose?
With that attitude, all you'll ever see is the worst. Ah well, I bet you're fun at parties. :-)
Re:Play this to the end please (Score:4)
You must live in some alternate universe where Engineers are complete idiots, or addicted to a news cycle that only gives you negative news all the time.
The world where I live in, Technology is working well most of the time, cars on the road are not exploding, if they do fail it is in a safe way, Engineers tend to be rather good at their job. Most went to school and took rather hard classes to get that engineering degree, compared to say Business Majors, or the Liberal Arts, they often have a lot of experience and rarely go alone on a project until they are very experienced.
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The world where I live in, Technology is working well most of the time, cars on the road are not exploding, if they do fail it is in a safe way, Engineers tend to be rather good at their job.
For a mature technology there are still an impressive number of safety recalls each year.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nh... [nhtsa.gov]
Of course safety problems are just the tip of an iceberg of breakage due to defective design the driver gets to pay for on their own dime.
Most went to school and took rather hard classes to get that engineering degree, compared to say Business Majors, or the Liberal Arts, they often have a lot of experience and rarely go alone on a project until they are very experienced.
Business majors are the ones pulling all the strings.
Commonplace in Canada? (Score:2)
I live in a major metropolitan area and the only "advancement" I've noticed in headlight technology is that oncoming late-model cars frequently blind me. Hell, some are bad enough that they're problematic in full daylight. As far as I'm concerned sealed-beam tungsten headlights were the last ones that were truly safe. Super-bright headlights simply encourage drivers to attain still-higher speeds in their quest to put their reaction times at the outer limits of their headlight range.
My wife's car has adaptiv
Yeah, this makes no sense (Score:2)
Problem 2: I think this article reads wrong; they're not talking adaptive, they must be talking dispersion pattern
Problem 3: For "adaptive" systems that turn into curves (last 2 cars had this) oncoming drivers are too dumb to realize this is happening and they see the change and think they need to "blind you back"
You want lighting
Really? (Score:2)
Even if they don't have a Smart Car?
Sorry, I'm an old fart, I'm forbidden to RTFA nor TFA.
From the department of... (Score:1)
NHTSA illustrates byzantine bureaucracy (Score:3)
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What they need to do is have a max height restriction on these LED lights on hugely tall SUVs and trucks, so they don't blind folks so damn badly. At night I am constantly driving with my left hand extended to block the bright ass LED lights of the fool in the oncoming lane. One of these days I'm going to get in a head on collision because I can't see them inching into my lane.
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Not the tech I was hoping for (Score:1)