[drdaeman]

> in Europe they’ll even divert the beam around you but for some reason we don’t allow that in the US

Is this true? Moving beams away from incoming traffic certainly was a feature (called "Active High Beam") on Volvo XC90 that I rented in California a few years ago. I've no idea if this was a US market car, or imported from somewhere, but it certainly existed and worked.

[multimoon]

All of the German automakers have this feature that they all call something different, but yes. The current NHTSA regulations prevent it from being deployed in the US, as another commenter pointed out though it seems like the NHTSA finally relented and approved it so I’d expect it to start showing up. My car already has the hardware and it’s a software switch to flip it on, so I imagine most other newer German cars are the same.

[cameldrv]

My understanding is that in the U.S. it's allowed to have headlights that dynamically turn on and off the high beams depending on whether it sees a car coming. The more advanced Euro version has a spatial light modulator in the headlight that dims the light specifically in the direction of the oncoming car, while leaving the high beams on for rest of the area in front of the car.

[SoftTalker]

> headlights that dynamically turn on and off the high beams depending on whether it sees a car coming

A nice feature in theory, my mother-in-law's Toyota has this, but it doesn't work very well.

[UberFly]

It's the default startup setting in my Honda CR-V. Too many things in cars are being automated like this. Not being able to dial in a windshield wiper speed and only having an "Auto" option drives me crazy because it usually guesses wrong.