Daniel Stern, DVN General Editor
This week’s Driving Vision News features an exclusive report on the GTB meeting held last week in Seattle. This report comes courtesy of GTB President Geoff Draper, and we are grateful for his dilligent, timely, illustrative comments on the main points of the meeting. Clearly the exponential acceleration of vehicle lighting technology is straining more and more aspects of the regulatory systems. These systems and the processes by which they are updated and amended were an acceptable match for yesteryear’s slow and steady evolutionary pace in the realm of automotive lighting, but not any more. There are too many things changing too fast for the regulations and the systems by which they’re devised and promulgated to keep up. Major changes are urgently needed.
Most of the industrialised world adheres (more or less) to the UN Regulations, but large countries including China, India, and the United States have their own regulatory systems with protocols and content slightly to totally divergent from the UN system. The US has been toying with the idea of a wholly overhauled, “vehicle based” FMVSS 108 that would still be different from the international regulations, just differently different than it presently is. And there’s been talk of a pan-Asian regulatory system that could wind up increasing proliferation of specifications and protocols rather than reducing it. In the coming weeks, we’ll bring you unique coverage and commentary on these kinds of issues. Coordinated, communicative cooperation and a great deal of unprejudiced listening is needed in our industry to steer the trend towards a streamlined, efficient regulatory protocol for devising, promulgating, and updating regulations acceptable with minimal divergence or duplication to a great plurality of countries each with its own vehicle and traffic exigencies and, probably of greater significance, each with its own regulatory and legal philosophy, history, and attitudes.
Surely the efforts of Geoff Draper, in collaboration with others in our industry, are at the forefront of this effort. And the DVN workshops organized in 2012 in America and Japan brought researchers, practitioners, and regulators together in brand new ways to facilitate communication among these often insular sectors. We’ve every confidence the 2013 workshops will continue that trend. Daniel Stern