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Auto High Beams not picking up cars in front of me

1K views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  Brian305 
#1 ·
Hi everyone,

New 19 Touring owner, just over 600 miles. So far my first impressions of the car are good.

I have had one issue that has happened to me twice now, and i wanted to get a sense if this is a "normal" issue or if my cars auto high beams might need a checkup.

Sometimes the auto brights fail to dim or will even turn on when there is a car in front me. On coming traffic will cause brights to go off, but they will even come back on after the on-coming traffic has passed even though the tail lights of the car are directly in front of me and not very distant (I am certainly not tailgating, but we are not talking more then 10-15 car lengths on a straight road with no obstructions around the mirror.

Note this does not happen all the time but in very annoying when it does. I know i can turn off the system but turning the light stock off auto, but i dislike this as all my cars for the last 13 years have had auto headlights and turning it off auto means i will forget and get confused at some later date. I also know i can turn the auto brights system off by holding the stock back for 40 seconds, and then it will not turn on. But i really like the systems promise because it most certainly turns the brights on more often then i would (to be honest in my last car i had xeon lights same brightness as the led in the pilot, and almost never bothered with the brights, probably used them 2x a year on average) and just today there was a person walking on the road with no shoulder as I came around the bend, having the auto brights on at the time most certainly helped me see the person, and I would not have bothered with the brights on my own.

So is this a common issue? Or is the general consensus that the system works really well for everyone else and should never be activating the brights with another car straight in-front of you? If so I might ask the dealer to look into what is going on.

Interesting aside, I do not remember the taillight configuration of the vehicle in front of the the first time it happened, I was to busy trying to figure out how to turn off the system to stop hitting the poor person with my brights, but the car today was an suv with "connected" tail lights that ran all the way across the back of the vehicle (like a durango, but it wasn't, i think it might have been a Lincoln navigator, but i am not sure). I was wondering if the system is using the camera to decide when it should activate the brights, maybe the algorithm is looking for 2 taillights.. (although this would be a poor choice for motorcylces, etc).

Thank for you help!
Brian
 
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#2 · (Edited)
We had similar results with our Pilot and Ridgeline. I didn't like the inadvertently flashing people. We got some crazy people around here and you just don't know how they will react.

We turned the auto-high beam system off. If I remember right, you hold back on the high beam stalk for 30 seconds and the high beam dash light will flash twice. System should be off. If you want it back on, just do it again. You may need to refer to the owners manual.

One note, I think the sensor is on the back side of the rear view mirror (drivers side). Make sure nothing is blocking it (ex. Dashcam, parking/pass stickers).
 
#3 ·
Thank you! I figured was not my copy of the car but likely just a limitation of the system.

Sounds like i will be turning it off with the 40 second pull on the stock... sad though, it could be useful but not at the expense of blinding the drivers in front of me.

-Brian
 
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