Is it time to ban LED Headlights

[bigmike20vt]

So they'd never fudge the figures to get by on a technicality? That could and would never ever happen?

Never say never but when you are suggesting companies of multi milion $ fraud - which has happened for sure - but when you are accusing someone of that the burden of proof has to be on the accuser.

So if you have proof that car companies have been deliberately using stronger LED lights than they are meant to, OR if you have proof that LED manufacturers have been under reporting the power of their lights, then you need to show it imo.

I trust car manufactures about as far as i can throw the product they make but still they have to be innocent until proven to be guilty... My main thing is i dont see what is in it for them.

i suppose they may make a tiny handful of sales by selling cars which light the road up like the sun and to hell with the rules and anyone else..... but would many people really not buy a car they want because it "only" has LED lights as good as other similar cars, or equally would you buy a car you initially had no intention of buying just becauser it had a reputation for having 2 mini stars mounted to the front of it? possibly if you hated driving at night........ but the potential downside of breaking the rules is huge, and surely it is a very easy thing to catch the car company out on as well..... the downsides just seem worse than the potential upsides for the manufacturer imo.

Obviously this is a popular topic now and indeed it was even being chatted about unrelated to this thread in the office yesterday.

Driving home last night i was concetrating on other cars and over the whole time i saw 1 car which i would say, didnt blind me but it was uncomfortable... Whether that was still on full beam, was badly adjusted or was one of the problem vehicles i do not know.

but i must have driven past over 1000 cars in my 17 mile drive last night (number plucked from hat)........... a large number of them must have had LED lights all bar one of which were fine, so personally i conclude its not the technology at fault but either their implementation in a small number of cars or their use of them by the driver in the car.

I fully support better checks on car lights for all sorts of reasons.......... but IF someone has an eye condition which makes them over sensitive to bright lights then perhaps they need to look at mitigation as well and not just put it on other people to sort out?.

BTW out of curiosity the people in my team all of which were anti LED lights I asked them what they thought should happen with existing cars on the road and their response was one of 2 things

1) all the cars are removed from the road until their light clusters are swapped out with halogen lights (if under warranty at car company expense, if not at the owners expense ) or
2) all cars with LED lights have a yellow film glued onto them.

If this is the level of "solution" people are expecting to happen from this investigation then imo they are going to end up v dissapointed.

 

[Kenai]

So they'd never fudge the figures to get by on a technicality? That could and would never ever happen?

One might but we're talking about pretty much the entire industry here, it's just nonsense.

 

[deviation]

Or busting your nuts on a bollard which the council put in the middle of a path for "safety" reasons.

 

[ttaskmaster]

Never say never but when you are suggesting companies of multi milion $ fraud - which has happened for sure - but when you are accusing someone of that the burden of proof has to be on the accuser.

It's not an accusation and this isn't a court.
However, it has happened several times before, both with individual manufacturers and across the industry, so it's certainly possible that technicalities have been exploited, figures have been fudged and so on.

There have also been suggestions that manufacturers are manipulating the LED software to function differently under test conditions:

https://www.softlights.org/why-are-led-headlights-non-compliant/

I trust car manufactures about as far as i can throw the product they make but still they have to be innocent until proven to be guilty... My main thing is i dont see what is in it for them.

LED lights are cheaper, and if they can pull up figures that appear to support the sub-2Klm restriction then they can eliminate the expense of installing washers too. Eliminating the need for a sparate or larger washer tank makes the car lighter and it gets better fuel economy. Probably a few more tricks too, but I'm not that into car sales tactics.

Driving home last night i was concetrating on other cars and over the whole time i saw 1 car which i would say, didnt blind me but it was uncomfortable... Whether that was still on full beam, was badly adjusted or was one of the problem vehicles i do not know.

I see plenty that I consider overly bright, but there's a marked difference between just those and the ones that actually dazzle. I can also be pretty sure that any tie I go out at night there will be a good 5-6 that do dazzle to the point of danger, which is why I'm not surprised that TRL are doing their study right here.

I fully support better checks on car lights for all sorts of reasons.......... but IF someone has an eye condition which makes them over sensitive to bright lights then perhaps they need to look at mitigation as well and not just put it on other people to sort out?.

Seems an awful lot of people quite suddenly have gotten very bad eyes, then.

If this is the level of "solution" people are expecting to happen from this investigation then imo they are going to end up v dissapointed.

Sounds like they don't understand the problem and the likely causes well enough.

One might but we're talking about pretty much the entire industry here, it's just nonsense.

Well it was VW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Jeep, Bosch, Cummins, Peugeot, Citroën, Renault, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Vauxhall, Nissan, and Fiat that were all found guilty during the decades-long emissions scandal... so it's already happened numerous times, yet you don't think that such a thing could ever possibly happen ever again?

 

[Kenai]

Well it was VW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Jeep, Bosch, Cummins, Peugeot, Citroën, Renault, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Vauxhall, Nissan, and Fiat that were all found guilty during the decades-long emissions scandal... so it's already happened numerous times, yet you don't think that such a thing could ever possibly happen ever again?

I think you need to come up with something better than "trust me bro, they're all lying" if you want anyone to take your nonsense even remotely seriously.

 

[ttaskmaster]

I think you need to come up with something better than "trust me bro, they're all lying" if you want anyone to take your nonsense even remotely seriously.

I think you need to read what's been written, rather than trying to argue against assertions that haven't actually been made...

 

[Kenai]

I think you need to read what's been written, rather than trying to argue against assertions that haven't actually been made...

Xenons top out around 3200lm.
LEDs average 4-8000lm, but there's no UK limit and you can easily get 12000+ if you want.

They clearly are brighter.

If they're over 2000 lumens, legally they must have a washer system fitted - the fact many cars with factory LED headlights don't have washers these days would indicate the output is often under 2000 lumens.

Manufacturers never lie though, right?

That's you asserting manufacturers are lying about output.

 

[[TW]Fox]

It's fairly pointless discussing anything if the opposing view is just going to be 'they could be making it up!'

 

[ttaskmaster]

That's you asserting manufacturers are lying about output.

Those weren't manufacturer's stats I cited. Nor have I asserted that they are lying. I merely pointed out that they have already lied and misled about numerous things in the past, so could very easily be doing so here.

 

[bigmike20vt]

LED lights are cheaper, and if they can pull up figures that appear to support the sub-2Klm restriction then they can eliminate the expense of installing washers too. Eliminating the need for a sparate or larger washer tank makes the car lighter and it gets better fuel economy. Probably a few more tricks too, but I'm not that into car sales tactics.

sure that wasnt what i meant... sorry if i was unclear... what i meant was if they wanted to use LED lights where is their incentive to use ones which go over permitted levels......... they could just as easily stay within the legal boundaries and not risk being fined.
It almost reads to me like you believe that LEDs by their nature have to be super bright... however they dont, just like halogens you can choose how bright you want to go.

LEDs do tend to have a much more targetted dispersal pattern however, and i can imagine a scenario where a poorly installed one, or if a car has had its suspension mucked about with or has the wrong tyres on , i could imagine that could mean that the lights would then dazzle more than if it had halogen bulbs.

i am not excusing dieselgate........... but there was a very obvious reason why it was beneficial to fudge it (it still boggles me they thought no one would notice mind you)........

bit lets say i work for Jaguar and i know everyone else is fudging the books........ surely it makes sense for me to stick to the rules and then do my own comparison of other cars and then complain that other cars are operating beyond the law. its not like it would be hard to prove either.... just put my new jaguar which sticks to the letter of the rules along side a car i know to be overly bright and have them both tested.

interestingly (or not) i noticed yesterday on the ipace forum a number of posts about lights, with some people saying they thought the ipace LED lights were really dim when compared to a Porsche taycan as well as a merc (cant remember the model).

so not all LEDs on all cars are equal it seems.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

It was obvious as VW had no urea tanks.

 

[bigmike20vt]

It was obvious as VW had no urea tanks.

just pee up the exhaust every few hundred miles... job done!. **

**yes your honour.......... that was why i had part of me thrust inside my car...... i was doing to to get my emissions under control!.

 

[Kenai]

Those weren't manufacturer's stats I cited. Nor have I asserted that they are lying. I merely pointed out that they have already lied and misled about numerous things in the past, so could very easily be doing so here.

So you're effectively saying nothing of any actual substance then, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Nasher]

Like with housing construction, I think there is a lot of cheating and fat envelopes being passed to officials in the motor industry...

We know they lie about emissions, performance figures, mpg. Cars have had questionable spoilers, exhausts, etc which aren't supposed to be legal.

 

[FatRakoon]

Nothing I say will have not already been said.

My make has a bike with an amazing headlight. His one light lights up the entire road, and for him, its absolutely amazing.

My trike has multiple lights, one main headlight, 2 smaller ones on eitherside of the headlight, and then 2 more on a bar that goes across the front, and these all light up the road.

Maybe if we compare them, his one light is definitely brighter, however, my lights spread across the entire road nicely and evenly, and when I dip the lights on the sides are much softer and the main lights sont dazzle oncoming drivers, and I can still see the road absolutely fine.

I live in the hill of Wales in Snowdonia and the roads are twisty and often your uinder a canvas of trees and it can be like a tunnel in some areas. and when I drive through these areas, the trees are all lit up and it looks great.

So, I often wonder why the hell so many people want to have such overly bright lights?

Its absolutely dangerous, and its only a matter of time, before someone wrecks, and I will even go so far as to say that its simply impossible that there has not already been accidents because of these lights, and probably even deaths.

The number of times, that I myself have been blinded so badly, that the ONLY thing I can do, is slam on my brakes and hope to hell that I am judging the corner about right before I hit the sides.
Sure, on a longer road, you have time to maybe focus a little, flash the oncoming nob, or whatever, and then you may take a second or two , to refrocus, and if youre on a stretch, thaty gives you a little bit more margin of error, but on twisty roads, when they have lights so bright, that they cann see other cars coming towards them and so you ge ta full face of full beam instantly hitting you and you have ZERO margin of error to refocus... Its a serious problem.

The thing is, that I could absolutely fit 3 of my mates bulbs into my trike, and I can adjust the side lights or even get really bright ones and I could be a complete idiot and I could have a lethal dose of lighting on the trike, but unlike those morons, Im not a dik.

Oh, and I do have a mate, that has a few of those ridiculously bright bars on his LandRover... one however, is on the top of his roof, facing back. He does offroading and so he has legit reasons to have these things and they are cool etc for when he is doing his stuff, but, when a car comes behing him with high beams on... a quick flash on that thing and they back off... WAY BACK!

I might buy one for the trike! - LOLOLOLOL... Amazon.. B.I.N... Click!

 

[whitecrook]

Does anyone get that thing when following cars at night, the red led lights seems to refresh and when they move accross your vision it looks staccatto impulses. Which makes my eye go really funny and very hard to focus and see. When i follow a car with old style continuous lights then it it possible to follow and not be disorientated. It's as if the flickering of the led light makes it very difficult to determine the motion of the vehicle. Its like a extremly fast strobe. Does anyone else get this ? Has anyone figured out a way to avoid it ?

 

[Nasher]

Does anyone get that thing when following cars at night, the red led lights seems to refresh and when they move accross your vision it looks staccatto impulses. Which makes my eye go really funny and very hard to focus and see. When i follow a car with old style continuous lights then it it possible to follow and not be disorientated. It's as if the flickering of the led light makes it very difficult to determine the motion of the vehicle. Its like a extremly fast strobe. Does anyone else get this ? Has anyone figured out a way to avoid it ?

Yep, it's when the LEDs are only half-wave rectified or the power isn't "smoothed out" (cheap power source). You see it with most christmas lights as well :/

 

[Jonnycoupe]

PWM to mange brightness so some people are more susceptible to the strobing effect.

 

[Rroff]

Yep, it's when the LEDs are only half-wave rectified or the power isn't "smoothed out" (cheap power source). You see it with most christmas lights as well :/

Cars don't really use AC though - sure the alternator kicks out AC but it will have a full bridge rectifier and regulator before any other electronics. On EVs you generally don't have an alternator and the lights will entirely use DC from the battery.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Dont correct him. Pointless. He’ll later use what you tell him against you. Toxic Troll Trait. Nasher head of the TTT