Zooming in the Dark!

Have you ever felt scared to drive on the roads after dusk? Well, as a kid, and infact even now I am scared to drive on the highways. The unpredictable traffic, the speed with which those heavy vehicles lurch ahead, not to mention the headlight dazzle- Lets face it, it is a nightmare, quite literally. One has to be very cautious while driving at night.

Mercedes Benz — The Pioneers in Automotive Innovation, that one company’s vehicle that we all dream of cruising in, has a solution for such a problem.

The Night View Assist of Mercedes Benz is the solution to our misery. This innovative technology employs infra red lamps along with headlights for better vision of the road at night. If you can’t look at the windshield and drive because of the retina tearing high beams from the vehicles in the opposite lane, their solution can save you. Their LCD display system installed on the dashboard gives you a better picture of the road. It also notifies you if a sudden pedestrian walks across you path. Once you look at the display and drive, you would feel like a gamer probably driving in a virtual world!

The display is 8 inches long, and it is in line with the driver’s sight- so not much effort is required and neither is the driver distracted from seeing the actual road. A small IR-camera is present behind the mid-rearview mirror which processes the scene and displays it as a grayscale image on the LCD. Though it seems simple in construction, this technology has prevented a lot of accidents. The range of the lights is around 150m, which is good enough for us at a nominal speed.

After Mercedes Toyota, BMW and Audi came up with the similar ideas but by making some minor changes. So, the next time you grab the wheel at night, make sure the device is on for some mind-boggling albeit safe riding experience.[gallery ids=”2724,2725"]