This week we pivot our attention to North America, where there’s a great deal going on in the lighting realm.
North America is particularly interesting to look at because while it is the world’s second-largest auto market (after China), it is something of a walled garden. The USA – alone in the world – disregards the UN Regulations which specify and control the design, construction, and performance of vehicle lighting in the vast majority of the world (and everything else in and on vehicles, and vehicles themselves). U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 contains room here and there for some degree of harmonization with the UN Regulations, but overall it is broadly divergent from how the rest of the world does car lights.
As wide as this divergence is in theory, it’s even wider in practice, with non-governmental forces like the IIHS headlight ratings pushing U.S. beam patterns away from international harmonization.
At DVN, ours is not to judge one regulatory system or philosophy right and the other one wrong. Rather, we comment on what’s to see and what it implies for practitioners: everyone whose work and life is affected by the regulations being what they are.
So this week, we bring you news of the Government of Canada grappling with how to balance ADB regulations, and how the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety are talking about glare. We’ve got a good show-and-tell for you about the intriguing lighting setups on cars at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and how suppliers in North America are putting out innovative new products at perhaps their fastest-ever rate. Meanwhile, DVN attended the Global Automotive Outlook Conference in Detroit, and today we bring you the highlights.
It’s not a one-and-done, either; there’s more news from North America coming soon, too, so stay tuned!
All the best,
