Global Regulation of Vehicle Lighting - Evolution and Next InitiativesGlobal Regulation of Vehicle Lighting - Evolution and Next Initiatives Geoffrey Draper1* 1 President -The International Automotive Lighting and Light-Signalling Expert Group (GTB) *Contact email address: president@gtb-lighting.org
Abstract—It is clear from workshops and other conferences that there is great interest in innovation of automotive lighting, both for reasons of improved traffic safety and for appealing and functional vehicle design. This interest is global, as we have learned from conferences in North America, Europe and Asia, and it is also being powered by research studies identifying the needs of the demographic issues of mega-cities and ageing population combined with the enormous efforts to develop environmentally friendly vehicles, and automated / autonomous vehicles. As automotive lighting innovation is a matter of traffic safety it can only be achieved on the basis of good regulation. Here, we have a major problem because the legal and technical requirements forming the basis of our global regulatory systems were founded in the 1950’s and are now unable to provide the innovation-friendly basis that industry and regulators are seeking to achieve. WP.29 the UN World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations is very aware of this situation and much has been done to update the 1958 and 1998 agreements to simplify and harmonise the technical requirements. However, we need to develop the will of the contracting parties and industry stakeholders to reach a global solution and this can only be achieved by working under the umbrella of the UN 1998 agreement. We must construct revolutionary technical requirements that will provide a basis for the foreseen innovations. We should not attempt to take the existing requirements and incorporate them into GTR’s (Global Technical Regulations) because the leading contracting parties have no appetite to devote their stretched resources on such an activity. I believe that the industry stakeholders share this view and also prefer to devote their resources to the future. The challenge, therefore, is to start to build a government and industry consensus to develop the new regulatory framework of truly performance based, technology neutral requirements. This is a task that will require a non-governmental organisation (NGO), such as GTB, to act as the catalyst for change and to work under the direction of WP.29 and GRE. GTB is well situated to do this, with the backing of the whole lighting community, and now is the time to start! Keywords- Regulation, Vehicle Lighting, Evolution, Autonomous Vehicles |