Hector Fratty

Driving Vision News organized 4 months ago in Stuttgart a workshop focused on confronting opinions on how to conduct Innovations in a time of crisis. The outcoming results were very interesting; we presented and analysed them in our newsletter dated June 23, 2009.

During the ISAL 2009 Symposium, Professor Khanh and the steering committee decided to dedicate one hour of discussion to a similar subject with an expert committee led by Wolfgang Huhn and Hector Fratty. In this committee were gathered top experts like Theo Dorissen from Hella, Michael Hamm from AL, Geoffrey Draper from GTB, Rainer Neumann from Visteon, and Masaru Sasaki from Koito.

Before starting, G. Draper presented a report on the contribution of the low beam to safety. This paper will be presented in greater detail next week in our ISAL report.
The 2 most important points underlined by Geoffrey Draper were:
– Car buyers are not very willing to invest in optional safety devices. They consider that their car is already safe without optional upgrades.
– Wider discussion is needed within the global vehicle lighting community about how to increase awareness of lighting as a major contributor to nighttime safety.

The first part of the debate concentrated on the bulb exchange and replacement constraints, leading to high costs. The new light sources, Xenon and LEDs, with lifetimes higher than 3,000 hours, eliminate the problem. We can continue using halogen bulbs, if their access is easy for the driver himself — or if not, then the bulb must have a lifespan greater than 2,000 hours.