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@Velocio
You know, I'd love to design a tail light with a super bright LED and a Fresnel Lens apparatus that acted a bit like an optical landing system.
The basic idea is that the super bright LED will have a wide angle of visibility, but instead of wasting some of the light that goes upwards at a steep angle and off to the side (pointing at 3rd floor flats next to the street), or downwards off to the side (pointing at the gutter)... it would be tuned to give additional brightness in certain areas behind you.
Now I know, all bike lights have some element of a Fresnel Lens, but what I mean is to use the Fresnel Lens effect to achieve something like the optical landing signal.
i.e. It would increase in brightness if you were directly behind, or on a side road, but decrease the brightness if you were safely off to the side and going to overtake.
Another example would be to increase brightness at the height of a truck driver... so when they got closer to the bike, it would appear that the light gained intensity.
The purpose would be to provide an entirely passive way of making the tail light give warnings and instructions to other road users. And much like the optical landing system uses a Fresnel Lens to warn when a plane is off-centre, the tail light would warn when they were on path to a collision.
It's a redefinition of how to use the lensing effect, instead of "make the light angle wide from a crappy small light", it becomes "make the light a useful warning system in some angles/heights from a powerful LED light).