Dr Strangelight, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love LEDs

There is nothing wrong with "LED headlights". It's the design that matters.
In this short clip I demonstrate how the design matters.

First this bike has one headlight and two let's call them "spot lights". The spot lights are on a separate circuit and a separate switch and I never turn them on when in a place with other vehicles. They're NEVER on around other vehicles I don't even use them in a retaliatory fashion against people blinding me because the last thing I want is someone to be blinded and crashing into me.

The spot lights are legit PAR36 LED landscaping lights used here mainly for comparison. They throw light everywhere just like all those bad LEDs that blind you at night. They're a quarter the power of the headlight in the center, yet look brighter than the headlight because the headlight is properly designed to NOT throw light anywhere EXCEPT where it's ACTUALLY needed.

Pay attention after the exposure is initially turned down. So what happens is you see the lights on the spot lights barely become any dimmer despite the exposure being turned down. They're still quite bright, even in broad daylight. The middle light however you can barely even tell it's on.

Then when I kneel down to give you the perspective of the road looking up at the lights, the actual headlight ends up dominating the scene SO MUCH that everything just turns pitch black to the camera, and the spot lights look like they're barely on.

In order to get blinded by my headlight, you have to be at below the headlight looking up. No one in any car is going to be below the headlight and looking up. The only way you can get that perspective on the road is if you're sitting or laying in the middle of the road as the bike approaches.

Allow me to explain the physics of this. This is a diagram regarding halogen bulbs. It's very relevant because I'm using the stock reflector intended for halogen lights, and the LED bulb I'm using is specially designed so that the LED chips are in the same place the filament would be. That's why in the above video the headlight looks like it's barely on until I kneel down.

Figure A, Parallel Beam, is how high beams are made. Flood lights are figure B. Low beams are C, convergent beam. HOWEVER proper headlight bulbs have a shield which prevents the light from going downward, thus preventing an upward reflection, so only the downward reflection happens. This means that with a proper headlight bulb, the vast majority of the light shines down at the road, not up at other drivers.

So here's how a halogen bulb is designed. The glare control shade shield is there to prevent the low beam from blinding oncoming drivers and people you're behind. The low beam filament is situated forward and higher so that it reflects off the top which then due to the angle reflects downward at the road.

The high beam is situated behind and central to the axis of the bulb, resulting in parallel rays that illuminate straight ahead instead of just the ground immediately in front of the vehicle. The high beam filament achieves this by being at the focal point of the reflector. This is also why when you install a halogen bulb, it's designed in such a way as to prevent the light from being oriented in any way except the ONE way it can be in that reflector.

Without the glare control shield due to the convergent beam created by the low beam filament's position, the low beam would actually be almost as bad as running high beams all the time.

This is an example of a responsible, non-blinding style of LED bulb to replace halogens with. Notice how the LED chips are in the same location as the filaments on a halogen bulb, and how the low beam chips happen to have the shield to prevent downward rays that would reflect upward. Also notice how the high beam chips are at the focal point to achieve the parallel effect from halogens.

Here is the type of LED replacement for halogen that is IRRESPONSIBLE AS FUCK!

If LED lights irritate you, this is your enemy here, not the above LED, but this one. Notice how the LED chips are situated fucking EVERYWHERE on the bulb so it throws light out in all directions at all times. The "high beam" isn't even a high beam, it's just MORE CHIPS TURN ON AT ONCE!

Another of the evil demonic blinding LED bulbs.

The responsible type of LED bulbs are EXPENSIVE which is why most people don't buy them. I paid $45 a piece for mine (they came in a pair, so that's $90 just to outfit one bike with one headlight). That was before the pandemic. They're even more expensive now.

The irresponsible bulbs however are dirt cheap. People wanting LEDs will buy them, notice how they throw light EVERYWHERE and be like "oooh I can see the tops of the trees at night! These lights are so good!"

Where as responsible LED users like myself go "wait, you can see the tops of the trees? why do you need to throw light all the way up there and everywhere else? Are you expecting your vehicle to take off and fly? Stop blinding everyone! You only need to see the road and have JUST enough light thrown out above that to see retro-reflective traffic signs. You don't actually need to see the tree tops or blind people!