alternative headlight bulbs?

[DriverOne]

Re: alternative headlight bulbs?

I hate the vehicles with a bazillion candlepower filling my rear view mirror. I was thinking of rigging up a sign the size of the entire rear window of a Festy made up of a matrix of bright LEDs (perhaps even white) whereby I can (from a laptop or a dashboard switch) select from among several flashing messages, including:
DIM
LIGHTS!
I have the capability to program a $5 microcontroller to do that, but have no idea where to pick up a big array of LEDS nor how to properly fasten it to the inside of the rear window in such a way that I can still see through the window reasonably well.

Your idea has been created: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/d13...=&CJID=3363563

[MiltonHavoc]

^ that is win, just wish it was a bit angrier....

[bravekozak]

I hate the vehicles with a bazillion candlepower filling my rear view mirror.

You need a Matt Helm T-bird. Then you can tell them what for.
The technology didn't exist then, but it certainly does now!

[bobstad]

Blinded By Science!!

Bob, it is interesting that you would post this on a day where I wanted to get a 50,000 candlewatt light and turn it on the faces of people driving behind me with their high beams on. I wish high-beams and light output was more severely regulated and heavily fined. I dont ever think there is a need for Hids or halogens. Just better driving conditions, better DRIVERS, and the knowledge that: if your night vision is horrible or lacking, Stay the freak home at night...

I would love to see a study done on how many people think they have horrible night vison, or are going blind, and its just from the high output of todays automobile lighting standards.
In Drivers Ed. we were always taught about "over driving your headlights". It doesnt seem like this concept is taught at all these days. everyone seem to think brighter headlights = better driving. The other side to it is that the inside of the vehicles these days have more lights and light to it having an adverse effect on the drivers visions and how bright they perceive their headlights to be.

This reminds me of the "defensive driving" mantras when I was a youthful driver being heavily coached by my father during the late 1960s; as well, by the automotive magazines I'd subscribed to then-greatly involved in motor sports my Dad also encouraged. I think driving now days has evolved a great deal; with many places flooded with cars, of whom most drivers would rather be anyplace other than at the wheel. Fair enough; given the obvious, that cars are eliminated from those equations: Good luck, as they say.

One of the handiest devices I've ever installed after-market; was a commonly sold device made for any sort of an application, one typical use for night illumination driving a tractor. I put this on the back bumper of my '66 VW "square-back" sedan with a toggle switch under the bottom of the ashtray, a little hidden though a spot which was also convenient. The uses were two-fold; to compliment as a back-up light, which I've never seen any car or truck adequately equipped with from the factory: While also an amazingly effective light to blink with-when being followed by some creep on my back bumper with their high beams on.[http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/2024980...a#.URgBvt1Ge69

I think that American culture & society is having to catch up painfully with the rest of the world; a process decades in progress, since the seventies: Where elsewhere automotive culture is far different-at least of the dominant society. Cars are more of an accessory, even if often essential ones; while far less of an interest: Simply "auto" meaning "self" and "mobile" of course "mobile" rather than the cyborg entity of ego & other drives a car culture may sometimes become. With the huge relative investment an automobile is, for most people however; I doubt that their focus will significantly diminish in the world's eyes-while also capable of morphing wildly and probably surprisingly.

A year or so ago, for instance; at the Facebook page of Seattle Improvised Music of all places-was a "like" of the Maybach, an ultra-expensive German car built by Mercedes using the name of what to date has been the world's largest car the Maybach-Zeppelin; made during Weimar Germany's between the two world wars government. I think perhaps that eclectic crowd of esoteric musicians; would much like a world wherein the only individualized vehicular traffic were exceedingly exclusive: "Yes, I'd do a Rolls; to slum a little" sort of thing. While in reality my only Festiva driving friend Amy Denio; is at the heart of this select group of Seattle musicians-lucky to keep herself with wheels at any price: The '91 Festiva L she got in '95 now like my own, with 180,000 miles.[http://www.amydenio.com