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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-more-step-to-sharks-with-lasers dept.

The supplemental laser spotlight—powerful enough to double the 300-meter range of the R8's standard LED high beams—offered a crucial performance edge at the Autodromo do Algarve, a 4.69-km road circuit and Formula One test facility in Portimao known for devilish blind corners and gut-check downhill plummets. It's a place where it's nice to see where you're going. Especially at night, in a street car, sans roll cage, that effortlessly tops 210 km/h—even with the track's longest straightaway denied to us for safety's sake.
...
In the Audi, each spotlight module houses four powerful, compact laser diodes, each just 300 micrometers in diameter. (The R8's standard headlamps feature 37 LED's in each unit to manage both low- and high-beam functions). Those diodes pump blue laser beams, at a wavelength of 450 nanometers, through phosphorus, which converts part of it to a warmer color. That phosphorescence (to state it with etymological exactitude), together with the remaining blue, creates white light at a color temperature of 5,500 Kelvin—an eye-pleasing, daylight-mimicking color temperature unmatched by even the best LED's.

Hooray, headlights that are even more blinding in your rearview mirror than the LED sort.


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  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:57PM (#212076)

    Why do rich people do that? Money didn't make their eyes weaker than mine.

    I really don't like it, it's dangerous, if I'm going around curves at night and I get that in the other lane it can cause me to drift abit during that half second where my eyes are focusing again to receive light in the dark. Depending on the time of year, like winter, that can turn into a skid easily.

    So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you own a car like this and I notice it when nobody is around, I'm going to kick your headlights out with my steel toe boots.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:05PM (#212090)

    So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you own a car like this and I notice it when nobody is around, I'm going to kick your headlights out with my steel toe boots.

    Thank you for your service to the Community.

    Seriously.

    These fuckers don't just blind other drivers, they dazzle pedestrians walking on sidewalks, and blaze into people's windows. I'm not normally a fan of regulation, but these type of headlights should be banned, period.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:44PM (#212100)

    > Why do rich people do that?

    You seem confused. The people who add illegal aftermarket HID headlight systems to their cars are not rich. If they were rich, or even just moderately well off, they would have bought a car that came with legal, properly engineered HID headlight systems in the first place.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @12:38AM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday July 22 2015, @12:38AM (#212139)

      Not quite. The rich pimp their car because it's cool to show they can afford it. The poor idiots pimp their cars because it's cool to look like you can afford it, even if your kids' alimony will have to wait another quarter to be paid.
      In my experience, the ones with the damaged shocks/struts are actually aware that the work stuff in their trunk is making their lights point up.

      My problem is the vast majority of idiots who just can't be bothered to check, or tell you (really) that their beams being too high is not really a/their problem.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @03:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @03:17AM (#212172)

        > The rich pimp their car because it's cool to show they can afford it.

        Maybe in 1 in 1000. Don't base a stereotype on an exception.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:51PM (#212134)

    I really don't like it, it's dangerous, if I'm going around curves at night and I get that in the other lane it can cause me to drift abit during that half second where my eyes are focusing again to receive light in the dark. Depending on the time of year, like winter, that can turn into a skid easily.

    I was taught to close one eye when someone approaches with blinding lights. Works great, the closed eye stays dark-adapted and works properly after the offending light source has passed.

    The other thing that helps is to look away from the bright lights, toward the other side of the lane I'm in, and focus on the line or edge of the road. This also helps me stay in my lane.

    If any of you want to kick in the lights on some of the worst offenders, you have my moral support...

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday July 22 2015, @06:39AM

      by anubi (2828) on Wednesday July 22 2015, @06:39AM (#212212) Journal

      Unfortunately, we are drivers, not pilots.

      Its already against the law to illuminate an aircraft with a laser... even a pen laser.
       

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]