
The Headlight of the Future Is a Laser - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/the-headlight-of-the-future-is-a-laser
======
skywhopper
I've seen a few off-road-capable vehicles lately with something that looks
like the bumper-mounted light bar shown in the pictures here. I don't know if
it's this same product, but I can say with confidence that it _is_ blindingly
bright to oncoming drivers, unlike the claims made in this article. I sit very
high in my vehicle and have been painfully dazzled by these every time I
encounter them.

But this strikes me as a very lazy piece anyway. There's no skepticism about
the claims, or the reasons why the US might have its current headlight
standards. It's basically a PR piece for this product.

The opening line clued me in to how bad it was going to be, though: "Most
people don’t turn on their car’s headlights and think, I wish they were
brighter." Sure I do! But on the other hand, I also don't want to blind the
cars I'm about to pass within six feet of that are coming towards me at an
effective 140mph when I'm driving on a dark back country road after dark,
which I do hundreds of miles of every week. That's why we have dimmable
headlights in the first place.

~~~
rootusrootus
Those light bars are usually producing a ridiculous amount of light, though.
All else being equal, the way to reduce glare to oncoming drivers is to
increase the area of the emitter. It's not really HIDs that have made glare a
problem in modern cars, it's everybody switching to projectors. Even halogens
are terrible for glare when used in a projector.

~~~
saltcured
Why do you say that? Good projectors have very little glare because they
actually focus a beam in the right direction. Of course they are bright if
shining straight at you but that is not glare. That's just over illumination.

Here in California, the worst glare comes from people who have put high
intensity bulbs into non-projector housings, people with oxidized/hazy lenses
on older cars, and people who misuse fog and other auxilliary lights. The
common factor is the ominidirectional emissions which are far outside the
regulated light pattern.

~~~
rootusrootus
What matters for oncoming traffic is the intensity of the light per area
emitted. A projector emits all of the light from half of a 1.8 inch (typical)
lens, versus a reflector light which may emit from an area 10x that. A well
adjusted reflector and a well adjusted projector will both point predominantly
down, but both deliberately put some light above the line, of course. And both
will occasionally be pointed directly at oncoming traffic due to elevation
changes of the road. The projector is much more intense and produces far more
glare when you look at it. Doubly so with HID, of course.

I've seen several newer Acuras and BMWs switch from single projector to
multiple, which helps, though you'd really need quite a few more to lower the
glare back to a what a big reflector light produces. I kinda wonder sometimes
what it would be like if we were able to emit across the entire frontal area
of the car -- it might be possible to emit significantly more than current HID
setups while having less glare than ever.

~~~
saltcured
I guess we are bothered by different things. I don't mind that the projector
lights are bright when they are actually shining straight at me, because that
is usually brief and predictable so I can avert my gaze momentarily. It's the
off-axis glare that continues to bother me when the car is not pointing
directly at me.

In my opinion, many new cars are very comfortable with sharp cutoffs on their
lights and almost no off-axis glare. They may be blinding if you're about to
be run over, but from the next lane over or at normal windshield height, they
are quite tame. But others are terrible and most seem to fall into the
categories I mentioned above: obvious aftermarket disasters with bright bulbs
mismatched to the optics, older cars with hazy lenses, and people using fog
lights (or high beams) in totally inappropriate conditions, throwing light
everywhere with poor cutoffs.

I'm actually starting to wonder how much of the problem is an aging population
trying to compensate for their failing eyesight by blinding us with high beams
and fog lights.

------
yholio
Great, so lasers are very directional and allow you to illuminate the exact
area that you are interested in. What I don't agree with is that you can
always exclude the eyes of the other drivers from that area.

Roads are uneven, you have curves and bumps and ramps. Unless there is an
inteligent system actively tracking incoming vehicles and avoiding them, there
is always a chance that you will hit someone with the full force of 10x
brighter lasers. I know of no such inteligent headlight system, that needs to
have close to 100% demonstrated success rate. Blinding the driver of a single
bike or tractor is enough to produce a major accident.

The way the headlight arms race is going, I believe there is an opportunity
for defensive technology to be invented: a liquid crystal layer in your
windshield that, coupled with a camera that tracks your eyes location, is able
to reduce the transparency of a very small spot in your field of view that
covers the incoming vehicle. Seems like it could be implemented with 80s tech.

~~~
cptskippy
Reading the article and looking at SLD Laser's website leads you to believe
that they are shooting lasers out the front of the emitter. They also both
implicate the BMW 5 series. BMW demoed a laser headlight system to Jalopnik
and it doesn't work that way at all.

The lasers are fired into a phosphorous element to excite it into emitting
light which is then reflected down field. The advantages of this over LED and
other tech is that it uses less power and produces less heat.

[https://jalopnik.com/how-bmws-new-laser-headlights-will-
work...](https://jalopnik.com/how-bmws-new-laser-headlights-will-work-and-not-
kill-y-1521586271)

~~~
dekhn
I assume you know this, but most big leds used in headlights already have
phosphorous elements. For example,
[https://www.amazon.com/Chanzon-6000K-6500K-Intensity-
Compone...](https://www.amazon.com/Chanzon-6000K-6500K-Intensity-Components-
Lighting/dp/B01DBZHUXA) is a 100W LED, the yellow is the phosphorous with the
LEDs embedded within.

------
linsomniac
Lasers are amazingly versatile! They can do everything from vaporizing a
bulldozer from 2000 feet away to delicate surgery on eyes, as long as the
doctor remembers to change the setting from "Bulldozer" to "Delicate". (Dave
Barry)

~~~
King-Aaron
Anecdotally, I was at a recent dental tech expo in Sydney and was allowed a
chance to play with one of the dental lasers on display.

The guy running the stand showed us how to peel the shell away from the
membrane of an uncooked egg, before then winding the dial right up and letting
me saw a lamb jaw bone in half with it.

They really are pretty impressive devices.

~~~
linsomniac
A decade or more I had a dentist that stayed towards the front of the
technology curve, and he had an argon laser that he used for some fillings. My
memory is that they were small fillings and he did it without pain killers,
there was no whine from the drill, etc. I think he needed to "rough up" the
hole that the laser made, which was done with the drill thing at low speed.

I really liked him, but there was a combination of his location being
inconvenient, and one of his dental techs was terrible, so I switched.

------
cimmanom
Because LED headlights aren’t blinding enough?

~~~
ceejayoz
The subheadline literally includes "but won’t blind oncoming traffic"...

> All of this luminosity leads to an obvious question: How are these devices,
> which have the approximate wattage of the klieg spotlights commonly found
> outside world premieres, supposed to be safely installed in the front of a
> car without inadvertently blinding oncoming traffic?

> “Because of the point source nature of the beam, you can pinpoint the
> light,” said Nakamura. “You can even shape it dynamically on the fly, so the
> beam will go down, or to the right, away from the eyes of motorists.”

~~~
gambiting
>>You can even shape it dynamically on the fly, so the beam will go down, or
to the right, away from the eyes of motorists.”

So, cyclists and pedestrians just have to deal with it, as always. Just like
current "automatic" high-beam, which does an "ok" job at detecting other cars
but fails completely at detecting other non-vehicular road users.

~~~
falcolas
Or when you're parked facing a restaurant with glass windows.

Or when it's snowing and all that directed laser light is being reflected
right back at you (not mentioning reflectors which are already absurdly bright
with LED and halogen bulbs).

Or when you hit a bump in the road and the redirection of light doesn't occur
fast enough.

Or when the vibration of fifty-thousand miles impairs the aiming mirrors. Can
you imagine the pathological case of a partially broken DLP chip?

There's too many corner cases and (literally) moving pieces for this to really
be practical.

~~~
pluma
As someone who doesn't trust his car's automatic high-beam, 100% this.

Are the lasers bright enough to be a health risk? You wouldn't attach a high
power laser pointer to a moving vehicle either.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
AFAICT these things don't actually emit laser light, they use a high power
laser to stimulate some sort of phosphorus-like material that then emits
incoherent white light. The point is then that this secondary light source is
very small (compared e.g. to LED with similar lumens), so the light can be
much more easily focused by optics.

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Groxx
> _Laser headlights have about the same consumer costs as current LED
> headlamps, in the low four-figure range._

Uh. What? Even recent model headlight assembly replacements that I can find
are in the _three_ -figure range, roughly $500 for a pair, and LED bulbs
themselves are something like $125 for a pair. This is several times more
expensive.

------
NikolaNovak
>>"Most people don’t turn on their car’s headlights and think, I wish they
were brighter."

I guess I'm not "Most people" because I have desired more light since I got my
license.

I've installed 100w Hella Euro projector lights for straight-line distance
(appropriately calibrated as to not blind incoming traffic); and replaced my
foglights (not particularly useful in Toronto, Canada) with corner beams -
short distance, wide spread, installed at 45 degree angle, so I can illuminate
slow speed turns into dark abyss that many drivways, hwy off-ramps, or small
city streets are. At night on country roads, I never ever think "well, that's
enough, I don't need more light".

~~~
ricardobeat
Many [newer] cars have 'adaptive headlights' that angle the light towards the
corner you're turning into. Works pretty well.

~~~
jacquesm
Citroen had that on the DS back in the stone age.

[https://www.dreamstime.com/editorial-stock-photo-citroen-
ds-...](https://www.dreamstime.com/editorial-stock-photo-citroen-ds-detail-
oldtimer-headlights-wheel-gray-image52551808)

------
Cthulhu_
Ok so bright headlights are annoying. Why are there no more HUD like systems
to improve night-time visibility? Project an IR overlay over the windscreen,
tune the lights back to normal, enough for visibility and the road right in
front of you.

~~~
arbie
We're _just_ getting to replacing the rear-view mirror with a camera. It will
be a while before the windshield becomes (augmented) display.

~~~
cptskippy
Most backup cameras are rubbish. 320x480 CMOS sensors with very poor low light
performance and several hundred millisecond latency. Even the Model 3, whose
backup camera is amazing the first time you see it, isn't that great in low
light conditions.

I'll be really sad to see cameras replace mirror on cars.

~~~
wil421
Are you sure it’s the sensors and not the infotainment display? I had a 2016
model of a car and just got the 2019. The display was significantly updated
for 2019 and it has a noticeable improvement over the older model.

I am almost positive they are the same backup camera. The higher resolution
screen shows better detail and light. I’ll look up the part number on Mopar
when I get home but I’m sure the sensor is the same.

~~~
cptskippy
It's entirely possible that the poor image quality is the display but the poor
low light performance is definitely the sensor.

------
ggm
After the introduction of halogen headlights, I wrote to the queensland road
safety authorities asking them to include glare as a risk factor alongside
brightness for car headlight specs. I didn't get a very satisfactory response.

I think glare is probably now a higher risk than lack of light, for normal
road driving with lights, especially given the emergence of the SUV with
higher beams and higher physical lamp placement.

Off road? specialist/military? Sure. I can see that this kind of light would
be hugely beneficial. for milspec usage, it might even have a dual function
(ie deliberate dazzle)

But for routine use, I need to see legislative control on bad effects of
lights on cars, to match obligations to meet minimums in light levels

(the article does talk about how lasers could be directed away from drivers,
so there is hope this is a minimize dazzle thing)

~~~
Aloha
I'd rather have the older dimmer headlights back, the projector lamps out now
are absolutely blinding.

------
csours
For reference, here are the IIHS headlight test criteria:

[https://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/headlight-
eva...](https://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/headlight-evaluation)

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PaulHoule
I wish my headlights were brighter almost any time I turn them on.

How do they avoid laser speckle?

~~~
astazangasta
Clean them. Modern plastic headlights oxidize and grow dimmer over time, but
can be cleaned (from the inside) to restore brightness.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwzHOO-3lk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwzHOO-3lk)

~~~
Retra
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speckle_pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speckle_pattern)

Laser speckle has nothing to do with your headlight plastic.

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acjohnson55
I'm not so sure about this. Even if you can avoid directly blinding drivers,
what about all the wasted light from reflection? Are roadways now 10X brighter
than they were before?

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m-p-3
Is it possible to buy those in flashlight form-factor?

That would be a really nice flashlight to own

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otikik
I always wondered what Data had done with all those golden coins.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLFiOV8l_lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLFiOV8l_lo)

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ignorant
As a pedestrian in NYC, I hate this. And don’t even talk about the impact to
wildlife. Régressive technology. If anything, provide cheap lidar one
détection, etc to help driver.

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kwhitefoot
Great, another nuisance.

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jpm_sd
Nope, the headlight of the future is a LIDAR on a self-driving vehicle.

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_salmon
> It’s another reflection of how the increasingly...

I see what you did there.

