European headlights having remote adjustable height ?

[TJ Hopland]

Just watched an Edd China video about headlights and I guess I knew there were some differences in some European designs than North America but now I'm wondering if there is way more than I thought.  The car he was working on in the video was a European brand but I would assume the same rules would apply to say a Cadillac that was intended for sale over there?  See, keeping with forum rules...

I knew there were differences as far as the pattern and aiming but the feature I didn't know existed at all was while he was doing the alignment of the replacement assemblies he showed some dials on the dash that apparently tilt the lights.  I guess is the idea is to compensate for loading?  It would not surprise me to find something like that was tried on some high end car but the car he was working on was a VW van and as far as I know VW there is the same as VW in the USA and they are lower to mid tier so doesn't seem like something that VW would have wanted to put on that class of a car if they were not forced to. 

So how long and where is this a thing?  And does it apply to all cars and trucks?  Does a bus or lorry also have this feature?  Do people use it properly?  Or like I would expect and maybe why the USA doesn't do it (that I know of) people would not use it properly so it would make things worse? Do higher end cars have that as an automatic feature?  Or do all cars now have it auto since the car in the video I think he said was 10 years old.  If you are gonna have the expense of the motor and mechanisms the little bit of electronics needed to make it auto seems insignificant.

Dazzling oncoming drivers was the term he used which fits and that has been a constantly growing problem in the USA since I can remember which would be at least the 80's.  80's I think was when halogen became standard and was also when the FWD cars that were sprung pretty light in the back also got popular so it didn't take much of a load to squat the rear down resulting in the lights pointing up.  Its got super bad since LED's came out because you can order 1000's of different things that you can jam into just about anything and maybe only 10 of those are actually approved by the transportation authorities.  Edd mentioned in his video that you can get the non approved ones at 'the shops'.  I have looked here and its the same, if you really look at the packaging you can find many options that say off road use only.

Finding out about this concept basically got me dreaming that maybe at some point in the not too distant future I could drive at night without being blinded by oncoming drivers but I suppose since much of it is likely due to modification by owners they would still screw things up. 

For those in few places in the USA that have inspections or Britain with MOT do they check for anything other than they light up and in the case of Britain that that remote tilting works?  It would seem too subjective to test the other aspects as part of those regular inspections.   

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

My wife's Australian delivered 2005 B*W has that feature and it works well.  Never had to use it though.

Found it whilst reading the Owners Manual whilst waiting in the Supermarket car park.  Surprising what one can find out when reading, and re-reading the Owners Manual.

Probably not a requirement in USA, but probably will get done when people lobby for it.

Bruce.

[Big Fins]

The manuals are 400+ pages long now and the print is so small, you need a microscope to see it.