You can’t upgrade your eyes as you age, but you can upgrade the lights on your truck or bus to help older drivers compensate. It’s a factor worth taking into account when changing bulbs, says Richard Armstrong of Lumileds.
Headlights were once famously described as “the eyes of the vehicle”, however, our eyes are something that we don’t often take into account when we think about vehicle lighting.
Yet light and the way our eyes react to it are absolutely critical elements when it comes to driving. It is simple but obvious to say that the better you see the road ahead, the safer you, your cargo, your passengers, or 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,” explains Richard Armstrong of Lumileds, who develops, manufactures, and delivers Philips Automotive Products to market. “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.”
Coping with glare
Also, our eyes find it more difficult to deal with glare as we age. This means that poor quality bulbs or, indeed, badly adjusted headlights affect us more the older we get. Hence the importance of having headlight bulbs that don’t let light spread where it’s not needed – something that is an essential requirement for OE bulb brands, such as Philips – and, of course, any bulb fitted needs to be properly adjusted.
The current range of Philips 24V automotive lighting products is designed to offer greatly enhanced performance over the industry standard bulbs, together with improved life and durability, enabling operators to choose the right product according to their particular needs or preferences.
The latest Philips MasterLife headlights offer up to 100% more light than the industry standard halogen bulb, combined with an even longer working life than before. It also has an increased life of up to 1200 hours.
With performance even more to the fore, the new generation of Philips MasterDuty bulbs not only enjoys further enhanced vibration resistance for trucks whose work requires ultimate protection against mechanical shock, but also excellent lighting performance, with up to 130% more performance than standard.
“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 people who drive for a living. Therefore, it has to be seriously worth thinking about upgrading lights from a performance perspective – as well as in terms of lifetime and durability,” continues Richard Armstrong.
He concludes: “The good news is that there is no need to compromise, as we develop Philips automotive lighting products for CVs, to offer a great all round blend of performance, style and durability.”
