On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, default wrote:

Ken Weitzel wrote:

I'd strongly urge you to check before you install anything other than
the original incandescents. I'm very sure that most places we can't
change them without "breaking the law"

And, what is the law?

Varies by state/province. Some jurisdictions explicitly require that
all motor vehicle lighting devices conform to US Federal Motor Vehicle
Safety Standard 108 (or, in Canada, Canada Motor Vehicle Safety
Standard 108 or 108.1). Other jurisdictions make vague references to
(usually outdated and/or inapplicable) SAE standards. Still other
jurisdictions contain subjective requirements, e.g. "Every vehicle
shall be equipped with two brake lights showing a red light to the rear
when the brakes are applied, which shall be clearly visible for a
distance of such-and-so many feet".

Seems to me I see a lot of trucks with new LED signal/stop lights, and I
can get close enough to see no SAE imprimatur on them.

Well, a few things he First off, SAE is not a regulatory body.
Despite
commonly-used packaging language, there is no such thing as "SAE
approval".
(There's also no such thing as "DOT approval", but that's a different
topic
for a different day). FMVSS108 and CMVSS108 do not require any
particular
fiducial markings on vehicle rear lamps. Such markings are optional and
are
frequently applied by reputable manufacturers of HDV lighting
equipment, which implies you're not looking closely enough for the
markings and/or you don't know what you're looking for. There are a
great many different LED vehicle brake, marker, tail, parking,
reversing and directional indicator lamps on the
market. Of these, a large proportion are fully compliant with
applicable
regulations and therefore legal in all states and provinces for use in
their
intended applications. (The remainder are 3rd-world knockoff
crapola-this
has been a problem since long before LEDs, and it'll carry on being a
problem long after LEDs are obsolete).

LED exterior lights are appearing more slowly on passenger cars, simply
due
to economic factors. Development and tooling for a good, durable and
legally-compliant lighting device design is extremely expensive and
quite time consuming. HDVs overwhelmingly use lighting devices made to
a dozen or so industry-standard formats (4" round, 7" round, 3" x 5"
rectangular and 2" x 7" oblong brake/tail/turn lamps, for instance).
Passenger cars, on the other hand, overwhelmingly use model-specific
lamps.

I have an interest in reducing my motorcycle's current usage - and making
myself more visible. LEDs can do it, but I wonder about the legality

How come? What makes you think LEDs are illegal? What spoils the safety
compliance of a vehicle is (surprise!) lights that don't produce
intensity somewhere between the minimum and maximum prescribed values,
through at least the prescribed vertical and horizontal angles, with at
least the
prescribed minimum ratio between bright and dim intensity modes, with
at
least the prescribed minimum illuminated area and at least the
prescribed minimum resistance to the prescribed types of deterioration.
That's a long way of saying homemade brake/tail lights and "LED bulb"
retrofits generally don't work well enough to provide adequate safety
performance.

(since the DOT has taken 30+ years to accept that halogen lights are better
than "sealed beams"

It's really not that simple. Some of them are, some of them aren't.
Virtually every owner of a '93-'00 Chrysler product who pays any
attention at all to headlamp performance pines for the "performance" of
the $9 sealed beams on his '60s-'80s cars. And as a concept,
sealed-beam construction in standardized form factors makes a great
deal of sense for automotive headlamps. The _implementation_ we were
stuck with for so many years was poor, but there's nothing about
sealed-beam construction, per se, that locks one into poor headlamp
performance. There are plenty of bad replaceable-bulb lights, too.
There are even bad "Xenon" HID lights. Good lights are better than bad
lights; there's too much room in the US headlamp standard for various
kinds of bad lights.

I know LED's can make a big difference in visibility.

Good lights can make a big difference in visibility and conspicuity
compared
to bad lights. There are some very good LED lights...and a lot of bad
ones.
And there are some very good bulb-type lights.

is just a matter of waiting (should I live that long) untill the LED
lobbyists pay more than the incandescent lobbyists.

This doesn't make any sense. See above; more and more LED-based vehicle
lamps hit the road every day with full legal compliance.

And we, the people, might be able to choose.

You already can.

Sealed beams were a great improvement over polished silvered iron
reflectors

Er...there were no "iron" headlamp reflectors. Silvered brass,
generally. Sometimes silvered steel.

- in the 30's- - and so the law was passed - - Halogen lights came along in
the 60/70s and could project more usable light where it was needed and not
cause glare to oncomming headlights - so the Europeans had them and the US
had to wait until General Electric could develop halogen (sealed beam)
headlights (that threw more light up in the air than directly ahead).

This is all more or less correct, though GE was _last_ to market with
DOT-certified halogen sealed beams. Westinghouse, Philips and Sylvania
beat them to it by a fairly long margin. GE kept insisting and
insisting that halogen technology was "unnecessary" on automobiles, and
that its use would create more problems than it would solve. This was
probably due more to GE's having recently-at-the-time sunk a great deal
of money into retooling their tungsten sealed beam production
facilities. Ironically, GE was first to market with a halogen sealed
beam in North America. In the early 1970s, GE Canada produced a
"Quartzline" 5-3/4" halogen sealed beam high beam, called Q4001, and
marketed it in Canada. It complied with European photometric
requirements and therefore was legal in Canada, but was "too intense"
for the US' unrealistically low high beam intensity limits and so was
not sold in the US.

When GE got out of the market - auto lighting was more or less for safety.

GE is very much still in the market. And auto lighting has for a very
long time been as much about politics, economics and non-tariff trade
barriers as about safety.

So how bad can LED lights be?

Very bad. Just as bad as other kinds of bad lights, if they're not
designed and built properly.

DS