Cooperative glare reduction using V2V radio technology

A lot of vehicle accidents happen at night under poor lighting conditions [1]. Thus, automobile manufacturers have started to deploy elaborate assistance systems to help drivers by illuminating the road in the right spot at the right time. A subcomponent of such systems are highbeam assistance systems which automatically enable or disable a vehicle´s highbeam headlights, depending on the detection of upcoming traffic. Con-sequently, no driver is blinded while almost optimal illumination conditions are still achieved. We present an approach that - in contrast to the state of the art - does not require a direct line of sight between vehicles on opposing lanes to work, as it relies on V2V radio technology. A prototypical implementation and an evaluation of test runs for the ETSI use case of cooperative glare reduction are provided. Our results show that this method achieves equal to better results concerning blinding times for the driver compared to a camera-based system.