The Lighting Committee of the U.S.-based Society of Automotive Engineers just held its Spring meeting at San Diego, California. These meetings are the forum where SAE lighting standards due for review, revision, and updating are discussed. That was done this time, of course, but this Spring’s meetings also included a great deal of high-content discussion about today’s and tomorrow’s new lighting and driver vision technologies in the North American context.
Several speakers commented that the first American DVN Workshop, held near Detroit this past January, has greatly improved the level and content of dialogue within and among sectors of the lighting world—industry, researchers, practitioners, regulators—about these matters.
There were discussions about
– specifying adaptive driving beam in such a manner as to make it compatible with American Federal and state regulations,
– talks about how to revise the SAE turn signal standard to require yellow rear turn signals (red is currently still permitted) without imposing implacable burdens on automakers in the context of American minimum-lit-area requirements,
– talks about how best to approach NHTSA with ideas and proposals for new lighting systems.
All of these will be the subject of discussion papers here in Driving Vision News in the coming weeks. There is also reason for optimism regarding harmonisation: the newest revision of the SAE standard on adaptive front lighting system basically incorporates all the technical prescriptions of UN Regulation 123, just with SAE terminology and document structure. Watch Driving Vision News for more commentary on recent SAE efforts!
