Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

[gordonb.x7kg6@xxxxxxxxxxx (Gordon Burditt)]

>>>A lot of new cars already come equipped with LED tail Lights. They are
>>>very bright, and if one LED fails, you still have a lot of light. The
>>
>>According to state and/or Federal regulations, if you're driving
>>with a tail light with one burned out LED, do you deserve a ticket,
>>even if you still have a lot of light?
>>
>
>Probably not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if my tailights far
>exceed the minimum requirements, so that losing a number of elements
>would still leave me with more than is required.

This was a legal question, not a technical one.  The laws tend to
be written to make it easy to write tickets.  I wouldn't be at all
surprised if there was a maximum of 0 dead lights regardless of
whether you could get it certified if you simply removed all the
dead lights.  The history of single incandescent bulbs that die and
leave you with no light makes it more likely that "driving with a
dead tail light" is a ticketable offense with 1 dead LED and 99
working ones.  This more likely comes from the state vehicle code,
not the DOT which is more aiming its regulations at manufacturers,
but you're still stuck with both sets of rules.

I seem to recall that there are FAA regulations that you have to
have at least two independent methods of measuring <something> (I
forget, this may have been altitude or airspeed) but if you add a
GPS unit, you now have three methods of measuring <something>.  But
you can't take off unless *all* of them are working, so adding the
GPS just added another point of failure.

Assume that a tail light setup was certified to be 25% more than
sufficiently bright with 100 LEDs.  It is likely to be ticket-worthy
if there's one dead light.  It may be ticket-worthy if there are
101 working LEDs and one dead one.  It might be ticket-worthy if
there are 101 working LEDs and no dead ones and it wasn't re-certified.

I'll ask the same question about boats, which one poster said had
very strict regulations.  Can you get your setup certified if you
have a dead light in it (without removing the dead one)?  If you
got your setup certified with N lights (N is, say, around 100) with
a 25% margin over minimum lighting intensity, and one of N burns
out, is that acceptable without re-certification (or fixing the
dead one)?

>Very unlike an
>incandescent tail light that if it loses one lamp, goes completely
>dark.

>I'm sure you have noticed that the tail lights on cars vary greatly in
>size. The DOT specifies a MINIMUM size and brightness.