Driving at night can be a pleasure, thanks to new technology

Things, however, change when night falls and all you have is darkness and your failing eyesight. The worst accidents occur at night and a significant number are caused by poor visibility and to a certain extent driver mistakes. You might knock a pedestrian or be involved in a car on car accident or worse still lose control as you avoid another car or animal.

Majority of night accidents are caused by late recognition of persons or animals. Others are caused by you driving too fast on a road you are unfamiliar with.

Manufacturers are working hard to improve night time visibility. BMW, who have been leaders in lighting technology, announced yet another innovative development in advanced vehicle illumination. They call it BMW Dynamic Light Spot. Under their umbrella of technologies dubbed ConnectedDrive, they have introduced a thermal imaging camera to anticipate the inevitable.

The system uses sensors to identify potentially endangered objects in the driver’s surroundings, which are then illuminated with a spot of light. A beam of light is also simultaneously projected unto the road ahead leading to the object so that the driver can elicit the right reaction at the right time, like braking or swerving. 

Unique challenges

Driving at night has its unique challenges. You are most likely tired and everyone else on the road is either drunk or in a hurry to get where they are going.

Visibility is impaired and as you age your eyesight needs all the help it can get. Your conventional low beam headlight allows the driver to see between 50 and 85 metres ahead, but this does not mean you will recognise the objects further ahead.

Majority of pedestrians dress up in dark non-reflective clothes to avoid being seen by muggers and thugs, but this also exposes them to road accidents. In tests, the recognisability of a darkly clad pedestrian at twilight was found to be just 29 metres.

It is always advisable to drive only as fast as the visible distance ahead, so that you can stop within your visible distance. That means you should never drive faster than 80kph at night because it would take you about 60 metres to come to a complete stop in a good vehicle.

To help make night visibility better, BMW uses an infrared camera with a viewing angle of 24 degrees. Using a sensor that detects the warmth radiated by the object, BMW’s Night Vision system guarantees positive identification of persons at a distance of 97 metres ahead.

This system must be complemented by effective headlights and this is what I did not have when I wrote-off my first BMW. Halogen lights have limited range, but this was improved upon by Xenon light technology about two decades ago. Now we have swivelling modules used in LED lighting technology to help see around corners being introduced in new cars. 

Have you ever been blinded by oncoming vehicles running on full beam? While constantly driving on high beam significantly improves recognition of the course of the road and its possible hazards, it inconveniences other drivers and causes accidents.

BMW has a solution. Part of its special lighting equipment recognises other cars at an early stage and switches the beam to high or low automatically.

This is done by a camera sensor that registers headlight beams of approaching cars at about 1,000 metres, and tail lights of other cars from about 500 metres.

Choose your next car carefully now that some "can see better" in darkness.