Quote:
Originally Posted by choneofakind
LED's produce only a certain frequency (only one color at a time) of light. If you put a white LED behind a red lens, there's no red light coming through. The result is a pink-ish white color. However, a red LED behind a red lens makes a deep red color.
|
This is very true, but keep in mind that the LED color may not match the lens color exactly. In that case, most of the LED's light may still be getting filtered out. I put amber LED bulbs in my stock turn signals. The LEDs were more of a yellowish, while the stock lenses are more orange. This resulted in not much light getting through the lens. Simply swapping on clear lenses made them appear much brighter (and slightly yellower).
Similar to the third brake light providing extra contrast, going from a clear lens to a colored light also helps add contrast. Plus stray light hitting the lens won't make it look like you're hitting your brake. I hate it when I'm following a vehicle through a wooded area and stray lightbeams make it look like their brakelights keep coming on. False alarms make you less ready when they really do hit the brakes.
In addition to allowing faster flashing, the fact that LEDs light up more quickly can also make you safer. At 60mph, you'll travel 17' in the extra time it takes an incandescent bulb to come on compared to an LED. If you could automatically give the guy behind you an extra 17' to stop, wouldn't you want to?
The big problem is that it's easy to make crappy LED bulbs. A good LED light can be a nice upgrade in several ways, but a bad LED light can definitely be a downgrade.