Hella says big benefits in using the technology for daytime running lamps.
You may have heard a lot about LED lighting in recent years but don’t know much about it.
A presentation at a recent Brisbane technical conference shed some interesting light on the subject (excuse the pun).
The focus was on the benefits in terms of safety, replacement cost and fuel use of LED (light-emitting diode) daytime running lights, which are increasingly being used on trucks in Australia.
Hella Queensland state manager Anthony Raisch told the Comvec conference in Brisbane that the German-owned company introduced LED daytime running lamps in 2007.
A daytime running lamp is designed as a forward-facing warning signal to enhance your visibility for vehicles coming the other way during the day.
Raisch cites various studies which he says conclude that many daytime crashes could be avoided or mitigated in this way.
He says LEDs have various advantages over traditional low beam head lamps, which are designed to light up the road in front and to the sides of a vehicle at night, with minimum glare for the oncoming vehicle.
For one thing he says standard headlight bulbs used during the daytime “require frequent costly replacement”, compared with LEDs which you can “fit and forget”.
Raisch says LED safety daylights use dramatically less power than low beam head lamps and therefore save fuel.
And compared with daytime use of headlights, LEDs reduced demand on the electrical system, for example alternators and batteries.
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