Audi has unveiled a car with lasers for headlights. The Sport quattro laserlight concept boasts twice the lighting range and three times the luminosity of existing LED high beam lights.
The car’s dual headlights feature two rings of light – the outer one generates the low beam light using LEDs, while the inner element produces laser light for high-beam functionality. The laser diodes are only a few microns in diameter, but manage to illuminate the road ahead for a distance of nearly 500 metres.
Headlights are getting brighter
There has been a proliferation of lighting on our roads. In particular, the addition of daytime running lights – low-powered light that are on permanently – to cars has been criticized by those who argue it makes it harder for cyclists and pedestrians to be seen.
It’s not just cars that now bristle with high-powered lighting. New technology is fuelling a bicycle lights arms race; the most powerful LED, Xenon strobe and high-intensity discharge (HID) bicycle lights are rated at around 2000 lumens – by comparison, the typical halogen car headlamp produces around 1000 to 1500 lumens. In common with the laser lights being proposed by Audi, it many instances these lights prove too bright for other road users.
John E E Fleming
RE: Headlights are getting brighter
I agree some car headlight are already too bright. There should be regulations limiting the light output.
Ian Byrne
I completely agree that the brightest cycle lights are too bright and potentially dangerous. I live in Milton Keynes and commute by bike on the generally excellent network of “redways” (dedicated cycle/pedestrian paths). These are typically about 2m wide, and often not as brightly lit as normal roads. Although it’s helpful to have a reasonably bright front light to be able to see potholes (which sadly are all too common on the redways), cycles with the brightest lights dazzle me and are quite difficult to pass safely on the relatively narrow paths. And I certainly can’t see the surface in front of my bike while I am having to look away to avoid the pin point dazzling light coming towards me.
Also, am I the only one who finds bright strobe lights disconcerting? The TV News always warns us about the existence of flash photography in their reports, but I don’t find that half as disturbing as an oncoming strobe cycle light.
Mike Croker
Yep: using off-road MTB style front lights on anything other than single track deserves a good kicking. I regularly cross paths with one on NCN2 going into Worthing. Not quite as bad as the one with a strobing silly bright (or rather, useless beam for road use) light, but very annoying 🙁
As for car headlights, there’s a big issue with small size high intensity devices – CJ on CTC forum explained recently. Construction and use regs are way behind the curve on lighting!
Anthony
Yes, flashing lights are disconcerting, certain frequencies can trigger epileptic attacks in susceptible people. Closing one eye helps. I use a cheap flasher for town cycling, it hasn’t the intensity to be much use on unlit roads, and it tells all around ‘cyclist’.
Being dazzled is nasty. I say, if you can’t see, stop. Sometime those Audi laser main beams are going to be mis-set; I hope they’re not as vicious at laser pens.