Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars
theringer.com
The crusade against bright headlights has picked up speed in recent years, in large part due to a couple of Reddit nerds. Could they know what’s best for the auto industry better than the auto industry itself?
  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    23 hours ago

    You don’t really need a second set of lights for signs. The light reflecting off the ground from your 9 trillion lumen headlights, and the efficiency of reflective signs are plenty.

    Most LED lights have a VERY sharp cutoff. Without the light reflecting off other things anything outside of the line of fire is almost pitch black.

    • Sconrad122@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      Reflective signs are specifically efficient at reflecting light back at their source and nowhere else (retroreflectivity). Obviously it’s not perfect, but the fact that that cone is so narrow is part of why it looks so bright (not dissimilar from the cutoff of the LED lights you are describing). Meaning that light reflected off the roadway before reaching the sign will generally be reflected back at the roadway. With how large some vehicle grills are being built nowadays, it may be possible for a low mounted headlight to be far enough away from the driver that retroreflective signs are no longer as effectively illuminated for the driver. Truckers probably already deal with this, I haven’t driven in one, but I suspect road signs are not as well illuminated for the driver as in other vehicles. We don’t rely solely on retroreflectivity to make our signs visible, so it’s not all or nothing, but it may be worth keeping some nominal illumination (could be like moderate flashlight levels of brightness) at driver level so we can continue to take advantage of retroreflective technology