By Paul-Henri Matha
During GRE 91st session in October, on the glare topic, Japan presented its report “Research on Standards for Automotive Lighting in Aging Society” (document GRE-91-17), to evaluate the glare phenomenon in relation to the increasing age of the road users and to suggest possible solutions.
Background of the study is the increasing age of road users in the world and the fact that elderly people are more affected by glare. This means for a given oncoming car with low beam, the discomfort glare perception varies with observer age.
Experiments were done to be able to detect a pedestrian at 60 metres when driver is glared at the same time by oncoming vehicles. The results show that detection of the pedestrian is similar for older and younger drivers when there is no glare but reduced significantly when the older driver is glared.
As explained by Japan, this oncoming vehicle glare can come from headlamp misaim induced by vehicle load, or by dirty headlamps. Technical solutions could reduce glare like new light distribution design, automatic levelling, ADB, and headlamp cleaning systems.
