Patent ID: 8143563

Claim:
Apparatus for use in a vehicle to protect a driver whose eyes are at a predetermined eye position, from bright lights originating from point-like sources, including a windshield with a part ( 40 ) that the driver most commonly looks through to view an area of the environment that is generally forward of the vehicle, said windshield having multiple windshield pixels whose transparency and opacity can be varied, comprising: a sensor ( 44 ) located beside said windshield part ( 40 ) and having a sensor area containing multiple sensor pixels ( 54 ), a lens ( 56 ) that forms an image of said environment area onto said sensor area, and a circuit ( 70 ) coupled to said multiple sensor pixels and to said windshield pixels that controls the transparency of each of said windshield pixels in accordance with the amount, or intensity, of light falling on a directly corresponding one of said sensor pixels, without opto-electronically determining the position of the driver's eyes; said circuit constructed to reduce the transparency of a glare-blocked zone of said windshield pixels that comprises at least one windshield pixel, where the directly corresponding sensor pixel is receiving a highest intensity of light of all sensor pixels, to block glaring light that would otherwise reach the driver's eyes at said predetermined eye position by passing through said glare-blocked zone.