Headlights optional on Audi A8 sedans that see around corners and illuminate more space without blinding oncoming motorists can’t be offered in the US because a 45-year-old regulation prohibits them.
“The lighting technology changed dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years,” Stephan Berlitz, Audi’s head of lighting innovations, said, according to the Detroit Free Press.
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“It’s difficult to do all these innovative things in this regulation from 1968.”
Industry representatives are preparing to meet with US regulators as a step toward changing the standard, the report said.
The US has long had laws banning headlights deemed acceptable in other markets. Amber rear turn signal lamps were not allowed until the seventies and import models from Europe such as the Peugeot 504, various Citroens, the Jaguar XJS and the Rover SD1 had to have their complex rectangular shaped headlight units replaced by simple pairs of five-inch sealed beams in the 1970s.
Odd-sized paired round headlamps were also barred so the Jaguar XJ6 line from 1970 to 1986 had to have the seven-inch outer beams used in all other markets replaced by five-inch units to match the inner pair. Even when rectangular headlamps were finally permitted in the US in the 1970s, their design had to be simple, the complex shaped headlamp units in the first generation Honda Accord were replaced by two pairs of simple rectangular beam units on US-market models built in Ohio.
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