In nighttime driving situations, high beam headlights are quite often essential to providing drivers with an adequate view of the road ahead. The trouble is that high beams can be blinding, meaning that motorists have to constantly monitor for other road traffic and “dip” their lights as needed – if they aim to be courteous and avoid causing crashes, that is.
Now, Ford Motor Company has engineered a smarter solution, based on its existing Auto High Beam and Adaptive Front Lighting systems. With Ford’s old Auto High Beam system, a front-facing camera detects light sources that indicate an oncoming vehicle, and automatically kills the high beams until it’s past.
Ford’s new “Glare-Free High Beam” system builds upon the detection capabilities of Auto High Beam, but rather than killing the beams altogether, specific zones can be shuttered as needed to keep from blinding traffic. This means that drivers can enjoy the benefits of a well-lit road at night at all times, without the high beams ever fully deactivating to spare other drivers – or even cyclists.
Ford’s Glare-Free High Beam system is available in Europe on the S-MAX and Galaxy multi-purpose vehicles, and will be available on the Ford Edge crossover when it launches there later this year. We’re unsure if and when it will be made available in North America.
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