(no subject)

[gfish]

After several hours of white-knuckled night driving through the Rockies tonight, I have a suggestion: Car headlights should be polarized, so you could selectively filter out the oncoming lights. Except it would also filter out your OWN headlights, though the reflections back should be less strictly polarized. So the polarization should be defendant on the direction you are going, with a rotating filter hooked up to GPS. That wouldn't be too hard.

Once this idea saves the American auto industry, a thank you in the form of an abandoned industrial plant (with its own rail spur, please) will be sufficient.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

We're working with several big German auto manufacturers to make LED array headlights, that detect oncoming traffic and shut down the part of the array that points that direction.
Until then, a webcam and a big screen would work pretty well as long as you trust your OS.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

http://www.avweb.com/news/airventure/EAAAirVenture2009_ForwardVision_200814-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Someone the other day was telling me about new DLP-based spotlights which can detect the silhouette of the person being targeted and light up just those parts of the beam, so there isn't a bright circle cast around them. And of course, once you have that, you can beam patterns just onto specific people as they walk around. Pretty fun idea.