Vegas Voice 9-19

Shedding Light on the Subject
By: BJ Killeen / Down the Road
As we age, our eyes are one of the first senses to
betray us. According to the U.S. Preventative
Services Task Force, vision loss affects 37 million
Americans older than 50, and one in four who are older than 80.
Which is why, as we age, we find driving at night less enjoyable.
In addition, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
acknowledges that almost 50% of all traffic-related fatalities happen in
the dark, despite only 25% of traffic travels during nighttime.
As time marches on and our eyesight gets weaker, technology is
improving lighting technology in automobiles so we can see better
when driving after dark.
Headlamp technology has evolved from candles to Acetylene lamps
to halogen bulbs to Xenon gas to LEDs. We’ve seen vehicles with one
articulating headlamp (Tucker 48) to four individual lamps to hidden
lamps to combined lamps.
Even the headlamp covers are an ever-changing design. The
standardization of headlamps now is part of the U.S. Federal Motor
Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to make sure all manufacturers are
meeting the required specifications for intensity, glare and height from
the ground.
The headlamp industry is growing, and all the better for older drivers.
New technologies include dynamic curve light that illuminates the
corner as you turn, or even static bending light that doesn’t physically
move, but illuminates different lights as you turn the steering wheel to
put the most
light on the
road.
Automatic
o n / o f f
headlamps
are standard
on many
vehicles,
and active
night vision
gives us the
ability to see
animals and
other objects
Photo credit:2019 Lexus LC
better than ever before. Another technology is pulsed marker lighting,
where the road marker pulses as light illuminates it.
Fog light aren’t included on new vehicles because the lighting
technology is so well designed that automatic low/high beams can see
in almost any condition. The bottom line is, if you are too afraid to
drive at night, check out the lighting systems in new vehicles. You’ll
gain the confidence and the freedom to drive again in the dark.
BJ Killeen has been an automotive journalist for over 30 years.
She welcomes all questions and inquiries, and can be reached at
bjkdtr@gmail.com
24
September 2019