Patent ID: 9358920
Filing Date: 2016-06-07
CPC Classification: B60Q

Claim Text:
1. A vehicular lighting apparatus comprising: a headlight illuminating an outside of a subject vehicle; a vehicle-to-vehicle distance detecting unit detecting a vehicle-to-vehicle distance between the subject vehicle and a forward vehicle present in front of the subject vehicle; a following-state determining unit determining whether the subject vehicle is in an automatic following state with respect to the forward vehicle; a vehicle-to-vehicle distance determining unit determining whether the vehicle-to-vehicle distance detected by the vehicle-to-vehicle distance detecting unit is less than a predetermined vehicle-to-vehicle distance; and an illumination controlling unit automatically controlling an illumination state of the headlight, wherein the illumination controlling unit automatically changes the illumination state of the headlight when the subject vehicle is determined by the following-state determining unit as being in the automatic following state or the vehicle-to-vehicle distance detected by the vehicle-to-vehicle distance detecting unit is determined by the vehicle-to-vehicle distance determining unit as being less than the predetermined vehicle-to-vehicle distance, wherein the illumination controlling unit automatically changes the illumination state of the headlight from one of a high-beam state where the headlight illuminates upward, a low-beam state where the headlight illuminates normally-downward and a daytime running lighting state where the headlight illuminates in daytime, wherein the illumination controlling unit automatically changes the illumination state of the headlight to a less-dazzling state where a degree of dazzling an occupant of the forward vehicle is lower than in the low-beam state or to a less-power consumption state where the headlight consumes less electric power than in the daytime running lighting state, and wherein the low-beam state is a state where an optical axis angle of the headlight in a vertical direction of the vehicle is downward by a predetermined angle; and the illumination controlling unit automatically changes the illumination state of the headlight to the less-dazzling state by tilting the optical axis angle of the headlight more downward than the predetermined angle of the low-beam state.