Seeing around Corners

Will the fog lights come on as well...?

By PH Staff / Wednesday, 30 October 2002 / Loading comments

Opel will introduce a new headlight technology, called Adaptive Forward Lighting (AFL) soon. The system to be introduced on the Vectra and new Signum is similar to that being introduced on other marque's luxury cars.

AFL combines swiveling Bi-Xenon headlights with a light that turns at a 90 degree angle for intersections and narrow corners.

The system developed jointly by Opel and Hella, will soon be available in other Opel models.

According to the latest figures from Germany's Federal Statistics Bureau, more than 40 percent of all car accidents resulting in death occur at night, despite the fact that there is up to 80 percent less traffic on the road than during the day. Scientific studies have also shown that visual perception, with which we absorb 90 percent of all traffic relevant information, is reduced to as little as four percent when visibility is poor at night.

The boffins at Opel hope that the new lighting system will go some way to improving the lot of the late night motorists.

Compared to standard headlights, the new Adaptive Forward Lighting system offers the following additional functions:

Curve-light: The swiveling front headlights shine at an angle of up to +/- 15 degrees, depending on the steering angle and car speed. Bends are better illuminated by up to 90 percent.
Turning-light: Junctions and narrow bends receive additional wide-angle lighting. The illumination is nearly 90 degrees to the direction of travel over a distance of approximately 30 meters from the car. The turning-light is designed to function only at speeds up to 50 km/h, so that it does not activate in situations like lane changes on the motorway.
Main-beam headlight: Bi-Xeon lights provide extremely powerful lighting on main-beam. With Opel's sophisticated Bi-Xenon system, dipped-headlights and main-beam can be projected on the road through one single Xenon bulb per headlight. A movable aperture in the beam path allows the switching of dipped-headlights to main-beam.