When Will They Let There Be Light?

Why we can't have better headlights here in the U.S. 

Outdated safety standards, lack of NHTSA leadership keep us in the dark 

Audi, a leader in automotive lighting, has repeatedly run into snags trying to bring state-of-the-art car headlights to the U.S. The German luxury automaker's recently introduced matrix laser headlight system, which performs many of the same trick as Mercedes-Benz's Digital Light, also isn't legal on U.S. roads.

And five years after the introduction of its matrix-beam LED lighting, which illuminates more of the road without blinding oncoming motorists with brights by simultaneously operating high and low beams, Audi still can't bring that technology to the U.S. either. This is because it doesn't adhere to the inflexible and archaic 50-year-old Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) that require all vehicles to have headlights capable of only switching from high to low beams and not blend the two together, which also rules out MB's Digital Light tech.

(AutoBlog.com)