Matching Future Headlighting to Driver Vision

MichaelJ. Flannagan

TheUniversity of Michigan

TransportationResearch Institute

AnnArbor, MI USA

mjf@umich.edu

Abstract—It has long beenrecognized thatconventionalheadlighting, consisting of lower and higher beams, falls far short of meetingthe visual needs of drivers at night over the range of speeds and drivingconditions that are commonly encountered. New lighting technologies—suchas camera-based adaptive lighting, LED matrix light sources, and laser lightsources—may be able to provide vehicle lighting that meets the nighttime visualneeds of drivers much better than has been possible in the past. Similarly, therapid growth of so-called naturalistic driving data, and the correspondinggrowth in methods for analyzing those data, has allowed the visual needs ofdrivers to be understood better than in the past. This paper will presentanalyses of naturalistic driving data, the resulting definitions of drivervisual requirements, and estimates of possible safety effects that could resultfrom different levels of implementation of new headlighting technologies.

Keywords-component;formatting; style; styling; insert (key words)