Future Rear Lighting Trends - Safety Benefits with LEDs 2001-01-3391

The paper deals with the current progress in rear lighting technology. Within the competition in offering the best vehicle for the individual customer safety aspects but also the appearance of the rear lights are getting more and more important. Our investigation is based on the equipment of LEDs within rear lamps. In combination with the CHMSLs (Center High Mounted Stop Lights) the styling but also the safety feature which one can realize is different. In achieving shorter reaction times when using LEDs there were already made some general experiments in a laboratory (1). For the first time we did experimental analysis of reaction times of stop function of rear lamps including CHMSLs in various combinations in real traffic conditions, taking conventional tungsten halogen bulbs and LEDs as a light source. The results will be presented in this paper.