Rather than have most of the light coming from the centralized source, spread it backwards towards a diffused reflector.
It doesn’t matter which direction it goes.
Same amount of light, but spread out much more evenly
You don’t want your light to be spread out. You want it concentrated to where it needs to be and redirected away from where it doesn’t need to be (including people’s eyeholes).
Have someone stand in front of a vehicle with the headlights on. They’ll be…blinded
If you have this problem then your headlights are not adjusted properly. That should not happen.
Now do the same test, but with a piece of white paper covering the lens. Now that will diffuse the light
You’re not talking about diffusion, you’re talking about obstruction. Do that and now the driver can’t see shit and ya might as well just not have them.
There’s no reason that oncoming drivers have to directly see the core center of the bulb
They don’t.
headlights…should generally be no higher than half the average standing adult height.
They shouldn’t even be that high. But once again, that’s a separate problem.
Also, putting white paper in front of the lens isn’t the perfect example, which I already said is a quick hack demo anyways. I get that would be a partial obstruction, but that also reflects a lot of the light back in randomly, which gets reflected back out randomly.
Kinda similar, but reverse, of how true lasers work. Back and forth reflection, eventually most of the light escapes, just in my hack test example it scatters everywhere, rather than in one direction.
There’s plenty enough knowledge and technology in illumination that there should be no reason for such large headlight assemblies to be shooting out all that light from something about the size of a postit…
Note that on the second video, about 18 seconds or so in, they show what I mean about staring into the core center of the bulb, they reflect the light through a fairly small magnifying lens, not much bigger than a postit note.
Why oh why reduce the surface area of the source of light emission so small, when the front of the headlight has so much more practical surface area to distribute the light more evenly? That only exasperates the problem by using a magnifying lens like that.
It doesn’t matter which direction it goes.
You don’t want your light to be spread out. You want it concentrated to where it needs to be and redirected away from where it doesn’t need to be (including people’s eyeholes).
If you have this problem then your headlights are not adjusted properly. That should not happen.
You’re not talking about diffusion, you’re talking about obstruction. Do that and now the driver can’t see shit and ya might as well just not have them.
They don’t.
They shouldn’t even be that high. But once again, that’s a separate problem.
Also, putting white paper in front of the lens isn’t the perfect example, which I already said is a quick hack demo anyways. I get that would be a partial obstruction, but that also reflects a lot of the light back in randomly, which gets reflected back out randomly.
Kinda similar, but reverse, of how true lasers work. Back and forth reflection, eventually most of the light escapes, just in my hack test example it scatters everywhere, rather than in one direction.
There’s plenty enough knowledge and technology in illumination that there should be no reason for such large headlight assemblies to be shooting out all that light from something about the size of a postit…
Okay, then have someone sit in front of the vehicle…
Guess what position people drive in? Sitting!
Anyways, I found these very relevant videos…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhRA0q-ZUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBWi0k_271I
Note that on the second video, about 18 seconds or so in, they show what I mean about staring into the core center of the bulb, they reflect the light through a fairly small magnifying lens, not much bigger than a postit note.
Why oh why reduce the surface area of the source of light emission so small, when the front of the headlight has so much more practical surface area to distribute the light more evenly? That only exasperates the problem by using a magnifying lens like that.