We live in a world where we can have laser headlights and tons of intricate gizmos to aid the driver and the car see further ahead and prevent collisions. In the meantime, what automakers could offer for the rear end of a vehicle were some LED’s and a camera that sometimes is worthless.
What they should add to improve safety features there is this simple and cheap laser system that should at least prevent crashes when driving through thick fog or a snow storm with limited visibility.
Normal foglights at the rear end of a car could get rendered useless in such an extreme scenario, leaving cars virtually invisible until the moment you’re too close to them and can’t avoid an impact. But while using a laser, things could get better.
You see, unlike headlamps, the light coming out from a car’s rear lamps has to scatter on a short distance not to blind drivers behind, since most taillights are mounted almost at eye-level.
Beam me up, Scotty!
Fog lights are indeed more powerful, but they too can be overwhelmed in certain conditions. Lasers on the other hand don’t suffer from that. A laser emits a very focused beam of light using spatial coherence, a complex optics lesson we won’t debate here.
So, because a laser beam is so dense, whatever other particles will interfere with its path won’t affect it that much. You’ve probably been to a concert with smoke and lasers and have seen that for yourself.
This means that if you project a laser beam at a certain distance behind a vehicle in poor visibility conditions, you will create a safety zone. A driver coming from behind will at some point see the bright line on the road and know there’s a car 5 meters ahead.
As Popular Mechanics points out, such devices are already available aftermarket for about $11 (€9.8). Sounds great, but in certain countries or states, altering your car’s factory lights is illegal, so unless theses things get regulated or installed by the automakers, rear ending a car in poor visibility conditions remains a high possibility.
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