Toyota wants to make night-time driving a lot safer

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Do you often times find yourself driving at night, only to come across a vehicle headed in your direction with their high beams on? As they approach from the distance, you can't help but to try and shield yourself from the intense blast of their brights, assaulting your eyes and making you recall that famous Manfred Mann song, "Blinded by the light." Several excruciating seconds pass until at long last, the driver is no longer in your field of vision. Sound like a scenario you've been in before? Toyota wants to fix that, by introducing a new adaptive driving beam technology that could automatically control how the brights in vehicles shine.

How does it work? Overseas, Toyota has already produced 16,000 vehicles that come equipped with a special camera built into the headlights. When the vehicle detects another car on the road, it dims the high beams ever so slightly, to reduce the portion of light that would normally shine in the other driver's face. This allows drivers to keep their high beams on, which allows more illumination (and better visibility) of the road, increasing safety. It's important to note that unlike other high-beam features car makers have introduced in the past, this one doesn't just turn the beams off and on....it allows the driver to keep their high beams on the entire time!

Here's where things gets strange, though. In 1999, a U.S. law was passed that forbid the use of camera/headlight technology in America. According to the law, headlight beams must either run in high or low mode, with no settings in-between. Toyota has recently been petitioning the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to get this reversed, as they say that it could be a useful tool in helping to reduce the number of annual fatalities caused by dark driving situations.

Vehicles such as the Toyota Sienna and Toyota Camry already have similar safety features (available on certain models), that utilize cameras to improve your field of vision, such as the blind spot monitor/rear cross traffic alert. It works by displaying an icon in your side-view mirror when another vehicle is approaching. Should the NHTSA ruling get reversed, it wouldn't be difficult for Toyota to start including the high beam feature in these (and other) vehicles, in addition to the safety features they're already available with. Do you think cars would benefit from being equipped with additional cameras and computers that assist our driving experience? Would having your high beams on more often help you to drive better at night?

Self-Driving Cars Not Available Yet, But Some of the Technology is

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Who's ready for the day when we can hop into our car, tell it where to go, and then sit back and enjoy the ride as the car drives itself? When we'll no longer have to worry about traffic and road rage because self-driving cars will communicate with others on the road to make our trip as efficient as possible? We might not even need to honk anymore! How soon is that happening, exactly? Well, not quite as close as we were initially thinking, the experts from the Society of Automotive Engineers say. Many had hoped we'd see the self-driving car available in around 5 years, at least according to predictions by Google. However, a realistic time frame is looking to be more in the 10-15 year range, or around 2025, to ensure the technology is perfected (and to minimize accidents).

On the plus side, elements of self-driving technology are already making their way into cars to give us all a taste of what's to come. Lots of newer vehicles, such as the Toyota Avalon, are being equipped with sensors and cameras that can detect when you're at risk of colliding into an object, as well as radar-based cruise control that automatically adjust speed based on the distance between your car and others. Adaptable headlights are also quite useful- they can detect when other cars are coming up to a certain distance away, and automatically switch between regular and hi-beam lights, giving you more visibility while not blinding others nearby.

Most interesting of all is park assist, available on the advanced technology package of the Prius V. This technology uses a combination of everything: computer processors, backup cameras, and sensors, to help navigate a vehicle into a parking spot. It's pretty amazing to watch as the steering wheel turns and the vehicle calculates exactly how to reverse itself! To use it, you pull forward as if you were getting ready to parallel park, and then use the backup camera and arrows on the touch screen to choose where the car is parking. Once you align the shape on the screen correctly, it becomes blue, signaling that the car is clear to park into the space. Then, the car will start backing itself up into the space as you control the brakes.

Check out the video below-

Do you know of any other self-driving features that are available, or that you'd like to see available soon?