In May 2025, the Corolla Cross received a partial upgrade that includes Signal Road Projection, a new safety feature designed with "you" in mind. We share the story behind its development and the vision of the developers who brought it to life.
How vehicle lights can reduce road accidents
Since the original Corolla debuted in 1966, over 57 million have been sold in more than 150 countries and regions around the world.
This model has remained a familiar part of many people’s lives, across borders and generations. Now, with the revamped Corolla Cross that launched in May 2025, it also boasts a new feature that is set to improve safety: Signal Road Projection.
When the car’s turn signal is switched on, three arrow-shaped chevrons are projected onto the road surface, indicating the direction of travel. In situations such as nighttime intersections with poor visibility, the technology clearly communicates the car’s presence and intended direction to pedestrians and nearby vehicles.
The team at Koito Manufacturing, which developed the Signal Road Projection system together with Toyota, explained that they focused on accidents occurring at intersections at night.
When it gets dark, a driver’s facial expression becomes harder to see from outside the car, making it difficult to establish eye contact.
Yukiko Kitazawa, Koito Manufacturing
Is there something we can do with vehicle lights to help reduce traffic accidents? That was the mission we set ourselves.
Although blinkers already signal that a car is turning, we wondered if there was a more intuitive approach that everyone could easily understand and that could therefore reduce accidents even further.
We figured that arrows on the road surface would allow anyone, from small children to older people, to see that the car is going to move in a given direction.
From there, the two companies worked with the National Traffic Safety and Environment Laboratory, a Japanese public body that analyzes automobile safety performance, to test the system’s effectiveness. Discussing aspects such as light placement and brightness, they narrowed down the potential shapes—which initially included circular and square forms—to the more intuitive chevron pattern.
Kentaro Tani, a fellow member of the development team at Koito Manufacturing, described the technical challenge of Signal Road Projection.
Kentaro Tani, Koito Manufacturing
Originally, we envisioned a three-light setup, with each of the three chevrons projected by a separate light source.
However, knowing it was intended for the Corolla Cross, we decided to try for a simpler, lower-cost configuration with a single LED projecting all three chevrons.
Through trial and error, the team arrived at a design that harnesses a phenomenon of light known as “total internal reflection.” This enabled a simple structure consisting of one LED and two lenses, compact enough that it can be flexibly integrated into the headlight.
“Nearly everything about the lenses needed to create this pattern presented a brand-new challenge,” Tani recalls.
If no one else is doing it, we’ll do it
The decision to incorporate Signal Road Projection into the Corolla Cross was inspired by a personal story, shared within a volunteer group at Toyota that brainstorms ideas for new features.
Shuji Seki, Project Manager, TC Management Div.
One evening, as a colleague tried to turn off a main road toward a convenience store, he bumped into a bicycle that emerged from behind the roadside greenery. Thankfully the accident wasn’t serious, but it sparked a conversation about how projecting directional arrows onto the pavement might have caught the cyclist’s attention. Looking into it, we found that Koito Manufacturing and various other light suppliers were exploring similar technologies.
In 2022, Seki moved into his current role in product planning, where he was reintroduced to this technology by Koito.
Project Manager Seki
I felt like our chance had finally come.
This technology had been on my mind for a long time, but I hadn’t been able to make it happen. I felt that if no one else had brought it out yet, we should be the ones to do it.
Seki received some words of encouragement.