Patent ID: 7719197

Claim:
A headlight control system for a vehicle comprising: low and high beam outputs; manually actuable headlight controls; a source of automatic headlight control signals; a controller for generating on and off signals on the low and high beam outputs; a state machine implemented on the controller for generating the on and off signals, the state machine including an idle state, a low illumination state, an enhanced illumination state and a temporary states, and defining transition paths between selected states, including a transition path from any temporary state to the low illumination state, which are followed in response to occurrence of inputs from the manually actuable headlight controls and the source of automatic headlight control signals; wherein the temporary states further comprising: a flash to pass state from the idle state providing on signals to the low and high beam outputs; a flash to pass state from the low illumination state providing on signals to the low and high beam outputs; and a flash to pass state from the enhanced illumination state providing on signals to the low beam outputs and off signals to the high beam outputs.