Consensual and co-ordinated vehicular headlight attenuation using wireless sensor networks

Driving at night causes approximately 50% of traffic fatalities; one of the primary causes being the usage of headlights on high beam. Courteous drivers usually lower their headlights from high to low beam when they see oncoming traffic. However, due to driver inertia, either inherent and/or caused by frequent switching between high and low beams, headlights are eventually left in high beam. This causes temporary blindness in drivers from on-coming traffic, leading to accidents, as well as permanent blindness in frequent nighttime drivers. In this paper, we propose a novel system to automatically attenuate the headlights of oncoming traffic and thereby reduce driver discomfort. We use a consensual and coordinated communication approach in order to request oncoming traffic to lower their headlights to low beam when necessary and lower our own headlights as well. Experiments conducted show that it is possible to automatically attenuate light intensity from on-coming traffic in fractions of a second, at significantly large distances, thereby reducing driver discomfort and mitigating accidents significantly.