Weird flashing headlights

ohnonotgmail

Driving home on the m50 yesterday evening i drove past a 2010 Superb. It had those led lights in a semi-circle around the headlights. The odd thing is that the leds were flashing. the headlight was as normal. are they supposed to do this? I found it very distracting.

Hal1

They are probably adaptive headlights, which will point in the direction the car is facing. This might give the impression that they are flashing. I'm not 100% sure if that's what it was or even if the superb was fitted with them.

The Adaptive Headlights cast their beam in the direction of the curve and ensure better visibility and more safety during night drives on winding roads. Sensors measure speed, steering angle and yaw (degree of rotation around the vertical axis).

zilog_jones

Do you mean flashing or flickering? Unmarked Garda cars could have flashing lights (though aren't they normally only blue lights?). Otherwise they could be very broken lights. I saw a Fabia yesterday with tail lights flickering like mad on one side, and they weren't even LEDs.

LEDs often use PWM (pulse width modulation) to control brightness, which could result in perceivable flickering if the duty cycle is less than 200 Hz or so but depends on a lot of different conditions.

MarkR

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Driving home on the m50 yesterday evening i drove past a 2010 Superb. It had those led lights in a semi-circle around the headlights. The odd thing is that the leds were flashing. the headlight was as normal. are they supposed to do this? I found it very distracting.

Some cars dim their lights to accentuate indicators. Wouldn't be that, would it?

ohnonotgmail

Hal1 wrote: »

They are probably adaptive headlights, which will point in the direction the car is facing. This might give the impression that they are flashing. I'm not 100% sure if that's what it was or even if the superb was fitted with them.

the car was traveling straight.

zilog_jones wrote: »

Do you mean flashing or flickering? Unmarked Garda cars could have flashing lights (though aren't they normally only blue lights?). Otherwise they could be very broken lights. I saw a Fabia yesterday with tail lights flickering like mad on one side, and they weren't even LEDs.

LEDs often use PWM (pulse width modulation) to control brightness, which could result in perceivable flickering if the duty cycle is less than 200 Hz or so but depends on a lot of different conditions.

hmm, flashing or flickering. they were going on and off in quick succession so flashing i suppose. I could see them as i approached the back of the car as i could see the reflection in the back of the car in front of the superb.

ohnonotgmail

MarkR wrote: »

Some cars dim their lights to accentuate indicators. Wouldn't be that, would it?

no, the leds on both sides were flashing so i dont think they were indicators. I thought maybe they were part of the cars hazard lights but the hazards on the back were not on.

ThisRegard

Occam's razor, I reckon it was just faulty lights. I've seen it before where they alternated between not working at all to the behaviour described by the OP.

cplwhisper

I've seen to 'boy/girl racer' cars with strobe lighting inserts beside headland bulb. It's to be cool on display units but growing in the modification list !