Thoughts on the Autobeam

[Jack Swofford]

Hi all, new member here but I have owned and driven Focus's for years haha 😄

I got a brand new Focus last Thursday which I absolutely love - tonight however I decided to turn the auto high beam settings off. To be honest I've never been entirely comfortable with the car making the decision of when to raise or lower them, and I'm an absolute stickler to never want to dazzle other road users. My experience with the auto high beams has been questionable at best - on Saturday while driving home, I had the system on and had the lights on high beam. Another car was coming the opposite way - perfect test says I.....only for the opposite driver to angrily flash me as he went by, and for me to realise the auto beam system didn't react at all - it certainly didn't appear to. I reverted back to manually adjusting the beams after that little experience. I have noticed the lights adjust and dim when I come into areas with more street lighting, which the manual says it is supposed to do, all well and good.

Tonight however I was out for a drive - I had a car in front of me and another coming towards me on the opposite side going the other way. The lights, for whatever darn reason went ON to high beam automatically at the worst possible moment and were on for about 3 seconds before I realised, intervened and quickly dimmed my lights. I'm sure the driver ahead of me was rightly peeved off at momentarily being dazzled. 

After those two little incidents like I said, I turned the whole feature off. I'm just not comfortable trusting it to make the adjustments itself when it should, perhaps rightly so from my own little happenings. Has anyone else had any problems and what has your experience been?

Thanks for reading,

Jack S

[dezwez]

Hi welcome

[Comares2001]

Do you have standard LED with autobeam or adaptive LED as there's a big difference as to how they work ?

[Botus]

useless site froze and double posted

 

 

 

[Botus]

• auto switching of conventional lights to high beam is awful

it is uncanny how it can see tail lights and switch down perfectly and usually manages to dip for on coming, but that is the bit any normal human can judge and mange easily and do it better anyway...

then we get to situations where its necessary to have it how the driver needs in the moment.  And this is the catastrophe of the automatic disaster they fit

1) driving along and for what ever reason even though dipping the lights would be considerate for oncoming drivers it necessary for you to leave on high beam to enable you to see / control the car safely.  Auto dip dangerous / potentially deadly

2) driving on unlit country roads, come upon a T junction (where you give way) the reflective sign flares up and you can't see a dammed thing, then you turn on to the main unlit road almost completely blind and have to accelerate past the min speed for the auto switching to operate to get the high beam on to see where you are going.  Auto dip dangerous / potentially deadly

3) narrow twisty road, the car sensor picks out the front door or security light on a building and dips high beam just as you need to navigate a tricky bend with nasty curbs and there was never any road user there to dip for.  Auto dip dangerous / potentially deadly

So you disable it and drive safely forever more....

• auto switching of expensive self morphing LED lights

Only used on a VW, utter crap, doesn't switch on after coming out of a village so fly blind for half a mile, ***** dangerous, twice forgot to dip for on coming traffic, and as above spotted the security light on a home 100 yards from the road and I lost visibility of the dangerous bend I was trying to get round safely 

 

 

 

[volts]

Used Autobeam in the SMAX was faultless

VW on the other hand AWFUL you have to reach 40mph for it to activate and its slower than fords

 

Both systems used conventional bulbs (non-led