American drivers are finally getting high definition headlights (adaptive driving beam)

Because standard 108 defined headlights is only having high or low beams, it tacitly excluded all of the technical advances that followed, specifically adaptive driving beam, or ADB, headlight systems, such as what are found on Audi’s matrix LEDs, Lexus’s BladeScan system, or Ford’s adaptive front-lighting system– none of these you will find operable stateside…

Broadly, ADB are headlights that actively adapt to the prevailing weather conditions and around obstacles like rain, snow, and oncoming traffic. Outside of the US, for example, Audi offers its digital matrix LED headlights, LEDs arrayed in a grid pattern and granularly controlled by a central processing unit called a DMD, or digital micromirror device. They operate a lot like the digital projection technology that they’re based on. The light produced by the LEDs is reflected by an array of more than a million micromirrors, each of which measures just a few hundredths of a millimeter.