Apparently some cars are equipped with an electronic headlight aiming system, allowing both right/left and up/down aiming. I can see the reason for left/right aiming, for example during turns. But what’s the purpose for electronic up/down headlight aiming? The only thing I can come up with is say you were carrying a lot of weight in the rear, making the front rear up more than normal, then you’d want to lower the vertical aim a bit maybe. Is that it?
So when you put the mother in law in the back seat and her luggage in the trunk the headlights aren’t aimed up to the sky.
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Yeah, it’s largely to adjust for conditions (like a lot of weight in back - M-I-L and luggage or otherwise) that might put the aim too high. It mostly applies to low beams AFAIK as it can be a safety issue for other drivers.
Just my understanding. I stand to be corrected.
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Manual headlight level switches are often found in European vehicles, headlight level control has been a requirement in Europe for decades.
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Should be mandatory on pickup trucks. I see too many running around will a Carolina Squat, lights to the sky.
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You got it George. There are a lot of pickup trucks where I live and a lot of people hauling loads and pulling trailers. Their headlights can be blinding to other drivers and less effective for them if not adjusted downward.
But Americans might not be capable of operating such a feature.
I expect Americans are as capable at using the function as anybody else. But it it indeed a puzzle why this is more common in Europe than the USA?
Because there’s less demand for it here.
Speaking of blinding headlights.
I am 68 years old.
I have a 2009 Mazda CX-7.
Many cars have lights that have brightness levels that are close to aircraft lights.
I use some yellow glasses for night driving because of those light levels.
Is that because of my age?
I wouldn’t rule anything out in that regard. Ask your ophthalmologist about it. But newer headlights these days are obnoxiously bright.
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Do you see halos around bright lights? That’s a tell for cataracts or maybe some other eye issue that your ophthalmologist can help you with. I just made an appointment to see my ophthalmologist for a routine checkup and discuss the progression of my cataracts. Any and probably all senior citizens will develop cataracts if they live long enough.
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No, it’s because motor vehicle regulations are different in Europe.
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Stricter I guess. That’s good! Better than the way things are in Outlaw Country.
Even things like airbag requirements differ from one country to another. As one example, Australia’s vehicle safety regs mandate a knee-level passenger airbag on many car models.
They moved way beyond that now. Their headlights don’t move at all. It works a lot like a digital projection TV, where each pixel on the headlight is focused at a fixed point ahead, and they simply turn on and off or dim the pixels in the headlight matrix that correspond with where they want the light to be at ahead.
This lets you do pretty neat things that you can’t do with our headlights, such as drive with the lights on fully bright without blinding anyone as the second video demonstrates very clearly.
I’ve chosen a 10-year-old Audi to give a demonstration of this technology for anyone who is interested there are some cool videos at the link below. I went with the older videos as I think they do a better job of introducing Americans to something that they’ve probably never seen before. Europeans are very familiar with this, so the newer commercials are more gimmicky imo.
Wow, cool actually!
And we Yanks think ‘we all that!’ just because we did the moon and other stuff first.
Uh uh, it’s now a global thing, not just one country or another.
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Unfortunately, for us, we cannot enjoy matrix technology fully as it was intended, as our NHTSA has spent the better part of 10 years foot dragging or sitting on their hands, while pretending to reconcile or be “studying” the new technology in order to figure how to modify the regs to permit it.
This despite all of the lobbing by Toyota and others, finally after 10 years of waiting, Congress had enough and passed legislation compelling the agency to implement the standard within one year.
I am convinced somebody over at that agency just doesn’t want the technology on American roads. I mean, this is their job and they can’t even do their jobs it seems. So the way they wrote the new regs have so many nonsensical restrictions that it waters down the benefits of matrix beam headlights vs what the Europeans have, it’s nowhere near as good.
Canada has a simple solution to the problem as they allow full matrix headlights on their roads. They accept European and American safety standards as being broadly equal and will permit either/both.
So the NHTSA, and other entities in the States, just want to keep things simple here.
You know, and not to veer off topic here, but I noticed a big difference in the way tire pressures are specified on vehicles in the Philippines vs in the U.S. - and this might also be the case in Europe:
In the Philippines and Europe, far more cars have door frame tire placards specifying different pressures for front and rear tires.
In the states, that’s the case mainly for large trucks, motor coaches, etc.
As for most cars, crossovers, and SUVs, the same cold pressure is listed front and rear. Is that just to make it “easier” for us Yanks to perform the complex task of maintaining our tires - joke joke!
Most Subarus (in the US) have placards specifying different pressures front vs rear.
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