Hector Fratty

The ADB, Adaptive Driving Beam, also called Glare Free High Beam, allows the driver of an equipped car to travel with a permanent high beam that doesn’t dazzle other drivers. Essentially, the driver always has high-beam seeing, while other drivers are exposed only to low-beam glare levels. But how real is the claim that ADB is safer and more comfortable than any other automotive lighting configuration?
Here are the results of 3 recent studies on the subject:

1) TU Darmstadt (Prof. Khanh)
The Technische Universität Darmstadt led an interesting study to assess ADB functions. Two vehicles were tested. The first one is a series-production vehicle with HID headlamps and and a glare-free high beam system that can be activated or deactivated. The second car is also a series-production vehicle, but equipped with standard non-adaptive halogen headlamps. Altogether, this approach allows comparing five different headlamp configurations; three with HID and two with halogen:

Discomfort glare
The figure below shows the mean values of all de Boer ratings sorted by headlamp function. The error bars represent the simple standard deviation. A higher de Boer number represents less glare.

Discomfort glare rating, mean values

Detection distance
Figure below shows the mean detection distance for each headlamp configuration. The error bars represent the simple standard deviation:

Mean detection distance by headlamp type

Conclusion
Comparing HID glare-free high (“driving”) beam to both HID and halogen low (“passing”) beam, the results show:
• No significant increase in discomfort or disability glare values, and
• A significant gain of 32 metres’ seeing distance versus HID low beam and 62 metres’ gain versus halogen low beam.