Adaptive high beams finally legal in the US

Adaptive high beam, dynamic high beam, matrix LED or simply adaptive headlamps are becoming more common these days. This facility was once reserved for cars from the higher segments, but Opel already made it more or less accessible with the previous generation of the Astra and it is now on the option list for more and more cars.

That is almost always the case with inventions that have been on the market for a while, and that certainly applies to this find. In Europe we have known it since 2013, but in the US this useful and secure feature was illegal until this month. Now that is about to change, because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has finally given the green light to the variable high beam.

The fact that this form of relief was previously not legal in the United States is the result of what is actually a very bureaucratic rule. According to the old letter of the law, high and low beam had to be strictly separated. A car therefore had either the high beam or the low beam switched on permanently. Strictly speaking, adaptive high beam does not meet this requirement, because part of the light beam is switched off here so as not to dazzle other road users. The fact that this is very convenient and increases safety does not of course matter to the law.

turn signals

It took the Americans a while, but are now correcting this ‘mistake’. Canada, which usually follows the American rules, already legalized adaptive high beams in 2018. Incidentally, a similar rule is active in North America, concerning dynamic turn signals. These Audi-style ‘led strings’ are not legal, because the law requires a turn signal to illuminate a certain surface when it is switched on. In the US, therefore, car manufacturers often assemble a light-up part in addition to the dynamic part, or reverse the order. For example, on the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the dynamic turn signal lights up completely in the US and then switches off sequentially.

Volvo

Volvo already presented an early variant of adaptive high beam in 2013, Active High Beam Control or called AHBC. This system, available on the S60, V60 and XC60, did not work with LED lamps, but with xenon kernels. Part of the light beam was simply obscured. Audi took a different approach later in 2013 and came on the A8 with ‘LED Matrix’ lighting. This works with individual diodes that switch on or off depending on the circumstances. That is in fact still the case with these headlights. If equipped with Intellilux headlamps, the new Opel Astra has 84 LED elements per headlamp, for an incredibly precise tuning of the (high) beam.