Adaptive Headlights Effective???
 

I live in a suburb of Houston Texas where roads get pretty dark at night. Insofar, the "auto" setting on my E63S activates the "adaptive headlights". When I look down, the "A" on the instrucment cluster is there, and often the green headlight indicator is blue, telling me that the high beams are engaged when there is direct oncoming traffic. I allowed this to happen as I assumed that the headlights were "blacking out" a section of the beam for the oncoming traffic. The frustrating part is that I know its not working since people flashing their high-beams at me as they pass. Do any of you experience this? Is there a setting to adjust sensitivity to oncoming light? At this point, I liked the binary operation of the previous auto high-beams where the beams were either on or off instead of trusting the computer to recognize the oncoming traffic and ineffectively "exclude it" from unwanted extra lumens.

Mine seem to work great, might want to get the dealer to check out yours, sounds like there is something not right, maybe a bad sensor or something.

My wife was bragging how well her adaptive headlights worked on her '14 ML350 up here in Montgomery, TX. High beams went on and off as necessary. Of course she rubbed it in that my GL doesn't have them. Head to the dealer....

Mine work really well and light up the road nicely, but as noted above, they're somewhat brain damaged as here in the US they're just up or down.

But they do respond pretty quickly to oncoming traffic and dim in time.

That said, I get flashed by other cars regularly even on low beams as the low beams are still pretty bright.

They react quite well on my C63s. Also shamless plug for www.amgsocialclub.com We are an amg group located in Houston, TX.

can't understand these decisions. I guess it's because of some law in the US? what is it?

... changes are coming though. Probably in about 3-4 yrs time. Our car already equipped with the hardware, I believe it just need the software or coding to enable that "glare free" feature.

You are describing matrix headlights. We don't have that in the USA.

What we have is automatic high beam. It is on or off, but it doesn't black out a section. It is also very conservative so you won't blind anyone, but sometimes the high beam will be off when it should be on.

We do have the maxtrix headlights - have you watched them turn on? Big light show :)

They simply don't actively turn off elements individually to blank out sections. Rather, they dim as a group.

I agree that they could be more aggressive about going to high beam mode. I'll manually pull the lever back to flash to pass position sometimes when turning up my street at night as the lights won't always switch to high beam mode right away.

I assume the US spec has the same headlight as Germany spec. At least Multibeam headlamps should be the same and I believe we can open all those functions with European light's control box or so.

I've talked to the guy who is living in France and his car has multibeam headlights but doesn't have driver assist package and he told me it works in the same way as mine multibeam headlights + does black out sections.

I had hoped that maybe when I picked up my car in Germany they'd have enabled the full intelligent LED features so I could at least try them out. Nope, configured as a US car from the get go.

Hoping someone will come up with an ODB2 port module like the lowering module and Auto start fixer that will enable the full headlight features . . .

Same here. My F80 was coded to have the anti dazzle high beams turned on. Unfortunately, the BMWs have always been more accessible for coding VS the Mercs. Maybe like you said, the lowering module guy can also figure out the high beam assist + feature. That would be sweet!

Unlikely, since he is from Belarus and Belarus is getting the same specification as Germany and he doesn't have access to the cars for North America.

Where is the software that controls this? It wouldn't be the ECU. Is it in a SAM? Or is there another flashable module in these cars that I haven't heard of in older cars?

You need to have  640 – LED Intelligent Light System. That system will dim the light around the incoming car.

On my order confirmation and window sticker, I have Code 319 which includes: P35 (Lighting Package code), 608 (Adaptive Highbeam Assist), and 640 (LED Intelligent Lighting System)

It was a $1500 option when I ordered the car, and one reason I did chose it was because of the touted intelligent independent lighting control for the oncoming cars and signs and so on.

So, pretty bummed when I discovered that the system was going to be brain damaged for the US market.

Likewise the remote parking pilot feature. Has been a time or two when I could have used it.

At least the hardware is there so that, in theory, we're a simple coding/flash from having it. I'm still pretty happy with the highbeams that progressively illuminate from the inside out, making it look like a curtain opening. It could be worse. Range Rovers in Europe have matrix LEDs that selectively dim around oncoming traffic...but in the US there use a plain two led system, even in top spec. So even if you could get the software for matrix leds, they hamstring the hardware in that situation.

Additional interesting articles on this issue:

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cul...eadlight-tech/

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/03/13/...er-headlights/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...isk/102108152/

Apparently, still waiting on a vote on the nominated NHTSA Administrator.

Driving a '15 E63. I don't get any flashes from oncoming traffic. Might be time for a visit to the dealership for further investigation.

I get flashed from time to time while on low beam.

The lights on the '18 are quite bright even on low beam, and they are very white. So potentially perceived by other drivers as being on high beam.

The low beams do appear to be properly adjusted and not illuminating to high on the oncoming cars.

I've done the same thing to other drivers on occasion and then been flashed back with their real high beams. Given the crap headlights we've all used for so long, its easy to mistake a bright low beam for a high beam.