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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

If there was one invention that made its way into every car - I wish it would be some kind of oncoming active light dimming / compensation system. Maybe in the glass, or glasses / goggles a driver wears.

What I do now on the highways is point my side mirrors all the way out and flip the rearview mirror. I already have deeply tinted windows.

Of course this doesn't help with oncoming traffic.

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Some cars have matrix LED headlights, where the car can turn off the LEDs pointing at oncoming cars, as well as turn the lights when driving around corners.

Here [1] is the VW ID.3. It's subtle, but notice how the area around the other cars is much darker. In real life it's kind of amazing to watch, as you see the LEDs follow the other cars on the road and "erase" them from the light.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFH0URtbX1s

Surely the inhabitants inside the houses being flashed on, drivers in front of this car, and drivers from the opposite direction just finishing the curve are ecstatic about this "brilliant technology". Nothing excites people more than being flashed on with blinding white light especially in bad weather during the night.

Maybe you misunderstood. What you say is already true for the type of regular high beams that all cars have. What matrix LEDs do is "blot out" areas they should not shine. That is an improvement over high beams, not worse.

I believe the ID.3 does blot out drivers in the opposite direction even in a curve.

Apparently these were illegal in the US until 2022, so I don't know how many cars here even have them yet.

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1135084_us-finally-allow...

My Volvo automatically dims both side mirrors and the rear view mirror when bright lights are detected, it actually works really well.

> ... I wish it would be some kind of oncoming active light dimming / compensation system.

I think fancy Mercedes models have very advanced stuff like that. IIRC it's even crazier: in addition to compensate in the mirrors/rear-view mirror, they can also detect where another car or pedestrian is and adapt, constantly, precisely how their own beams are projected as to not blind anyone.

EDIT: other manufacturer do it too, it is called "Matrix headlights".

I find these a bit annoying, as I think the side effect is that they are basically main beam all the time otherwise, and only dim selectively.

Which is great and all, but means things like they are projecting FRICKIN' LASERS into people's homes (especially when turning) or if you are a pedestrian that it doesn't detect properly (e.g. at some distance down a cluttered urban road etc) you get someone driving at you with really very uncomfortably bright lights shining in your face (I get this a lot when running at night - perhaps the models detect a pedestrian walking but not jogging?).

I am sure it works great in controlled conditions (and I have seen YouTube videos out on the clear open road where it detects oncoming vehicles nicely) but it feels pretty ineffective and anti-social in an urban/suburban environment, at least to me.

Some cars already do this, like Tesla's Adaptive Headlights feature [1].

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_sg/GUID-1C20964...

Tesla's are the worst offenders outside of big trucks imo

> High beams are currently turned on, and Adaptive Headlights is ready to turn off the high beams if light is detected in front of Model 3.

The description makes it sound like the Tesla implementation of "Adaptive headlights" is actually just "automatic high beams". The most common extra feature of adaptive headlights is corner-adaptive, the ability to pivot into the direction of travel. For the past years adaptive headlights could even mean "smart headlights" with selective dimming. Does Tesla include these features as well?

Anecdotally I can say that what stands out with (some?) Tesla headlights is that they keep the high beams shining for way too long and even the low beams seem to be overly bright. I can't say if this is down to the driver manually controlling the high beams or the general calibration of the incoming light sensor and the auto leveling of the headlight.

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