Lumileds shines light on vision issues
Lumileds, which develops, manufactures and brings to market Philips Automotive products, has underlined the impact of ageing on vision, and the implications for commercial vehicle lighting.
While headlights have been described as ‘the eyes of the vehicle’, our own eyes are a factor we often don’t take into account, the company contends – but light and the way our eyes react to it are absolutely critical when it comes to driving. Put simply, the better a driver can see the road ahead, the safer they, the cargo, passengers and other road users are.
“We tend to think that CV lighting is all about reducing downtime to a minimum – and that is of vital importance,” said Richard Armstrong of Lumileds, “but overall it goes much further than that.
“Although we experience our eyes changing during our lifetime – usually becoming longer or shorter sighted – we tend to think that, in most other ways, our eyes remain pretty constant. That is far from reality.”
In fact, vision changes dramatically in various ways as we age, explains Lumileds: a child’s lenses are completely clear and see really well even in very low light conditions; but as we age, the lenses in our eyes grow more opaque, and the pupils in our eyes grow smaller, letting in less light.
In addition, says the company, our eyes find it more difficult to deal with glare as we age, meaning poor quality bulbs or badly adjusted headlights affect us more as we get older. It emphasises the importance of having headlight bulbs that don’t let light spread where it’s not needed – an essential requirement for OE bulb brands like Philips – which are properly adjusted.
The current range of Philips 24V automotive lighting products is designed to offer greatly enhanced performance over the industry standard bulbs, says Lumileds, together with top-of-the-line longevity and durability – enabling operators to choose the right product according to their particular needs or preferences.
The latest Philips MasterLife headlights are said to offer up to 100 per cent more light than the industry standard halogen bulb, combined with an even longer working life than before – now up to 1,200 hours.
Meanwhile, the new iteration of Philips MasterDuty bulbs not only enjoys further enhanced vibration resistance for trucks whose work requires ultimate protection against mechanical shock, says the firm, but also excellent lighting performance, with up to 130 per cent more performance than standard.
MasterLife and MasterDuty both come in H1, H3, H4 and H7 configurations.
The Philips 24V bulb range also includes a comprehensive range of fog lights, positioning lights, indicators, stop and running lights, and like the headlights they are designed to offer exceptional visibility, says Lumileds – this time for other road users.
There is also a wide range of interior lights and dashboard lighting, again designed with user visual comfort as a priority. The Philips 24V signalling and interior lamps offer a wide range of lighting solutions and are available in both standard or LED formats for truck, bus and heavy-duty vehicles.
“With the way vision changes over a lifetime, when it comes time to replace your vehicle’s lights. maintaining optimum visibility behind the wheel must surely be a key consideration for those whose profession is driving or operating vehicles for those who drive for a living,” added Richard Armstrong.
“Therefore, it has to be seriously worth thinking about upgrading lights from a performance perspective for comfort and safety – as well as in terms of lifetime and durability.
“The good news is that there really is no need to compromise, as we develop Philips products to offer a great all-round blend of performance, style and durability.”
