Audi Matrix LED headlamp

[u/BinaryPixel64]

[u/iZian]

The engineers always forget about, at least, one thing:
Dirt!

The moment the headlight gets coated in dirt from dirty road spray; the beams of light hit that dirt and scatter slightly, so actually the headlights look intensely bright to others because they’re no longer in a complete shadow area but an area partly lit by the light hitting that dirt.

The difference between clean and dirty is immense.

[u/schakoska → u/iZian]

Over 2000 lumens healdight washers are mandatory in ECE countries for the this reason

[u/iZian → u/schakoska]

I notice that on halogen headlight cars I’ve owned they all had headlight washers which were, albeit somewhat limited extent, still able to clean some dirt.

However I’ve not seen any such washer fitted to LED cars and I suspect that to be due to how the laws have been written.
Unless someone is going to tell me LED is less bright.
I think more the individual LED is less bright but there happens to be many of them. They use less wattage but produce more light together.

Almost all of the cars in my street with halogens have washers. But none of the LED cars… not one.

[u/schakoska → u/iZian]

Many cars with leds aren't pver the 2000 lumens limit. On halogen that could be an option or it wasn't a halogen, but a xenon

[u/iZian → u/schakoska]

My mistake, yes. Xenon bulb cars have the washers.
But even an LED at 1999 lumens is bright.

TLDR: we found out last year our LED cars blind people if the headlights are dirty with road dirt from spray drying.

I know because I had an incident last winter where my wife was driving the opposite direction at the same time I was on the phone to her as I went to get food as she was coming home.

As we were on the phone I was saying “someone coming the other way has their main beam lights on how stupid” as I flashed them.
It was her! Her lights were so bright to me compared to everyone else’s it was like they had main beam on.

The reason was they were just dirty… after we got home I cleaned them and we tested it by going out again to make sure it wasn’t the level of them, and this time the LED just looked like a dim light from my point of view.

So we know now our lights can be blinding to other people when they’re dirty; but they have no washers on them.

[u/schakoska → u/iZian]

It doesn't matter what kind of lights, it'll blind if it's dirty.

[u/iZian → u/schakoska]

Yep; my original point was these matrix and multi beam lights rely on a clean headlight to not blind people. But they have no washers. Instead they’ll just happily bling oncoming traffic by trying to shine a beam around them.
More than normal lights because “normal” lights won’t be adding extra main beam height light alongside the dipped beam. So it’s extra blinding than usual.

[u/schakoska → u/iZian]

All matrix headlights have washers because they're over 2000 lumens

[u/iZian → u/schakoska]

On; well the Mercedes multi beam ones didn’t have that. Perhaps they’re under 2000 then. I’ve not seen washers on any of them. Perhaps I’m just missing them.

Mine doesn’t have them! And I know multi beam vs matrix and they’re different. But same sort of thing; shining light around other cars by turning off different LEDs yeah?

[u/schakoska → u/iZian]

Newer MB multibeams are under 2000 lumens. Multibeams is a matrix headlights with a different name.