Does this look terrible to anyone else? I can't imagine how it deals with rapidly changing bumpy roads. Based on the effectiveness of today's "automatic brights" that only detect other cars 80% of the time, I can imagine lots of nasty failure cases, especially as the computers and the sensors age.

Worst of all... how exactly does this tech deal with pedestrians? Perhaps by blinding them completely? Maybe it has some detection for movement, but what if I'm just standing by the side of the road, maybe waiting for a friend to pick me up?

I really wish regulators would stop this madness. Feels like an arms race out there on the road.

I have a car with a similar feature. It can be erratic (on/off a lot) in certain situations where there is a lot of lights/signs around. But typically I don't have brights on there. Haven't noticed any degradation with age, but certainly possible.

For context, this is demonstrating a more advanced "automatic brights" system albeit somewhat rudimentary compared to some of the newer LED projectors (e.g. Audi, Mercedes). Turning on your brights is still opt-in. Normal brights don't turn off automatically for pedestrians

I think I've been blinded as a pedestrian, in a city, by automatic bright systems.

People must think that since they're computer controlled that its fine to run them in the city, or else they just forget that they're turned on.

Of course the solution must be some swiveling IoT Rube Goldberg light. We simply don't have the technology to dim the lights or adjust the hue.

Absolute garbage. It's completely unsafe to start changing headlight direction and brightness, because that's how other members of car traffic detect where you are.

If your brightness suddenly changes, people may assume you're further or closer than you actually are and if your headlight direction changes, they may assume you're on a collision course with them and in turn behave erratically.

I really did not expect this from Volvo. Tbh the person who suggested this needs to be fired immediately and barred from doing anything safety-related for the rest of their life.

I can only assume you've never travelled in one of these cars, or seen one on the road?

They are great - driving towards them you still see the headlights as a block of light either side of the car - you just aren't blinded by it.

As a driver of the volvo - you just drive and never need to think about your lights - you can see as well as in any car, and better infact as the sides are of the road are still well illuminated.