Do white LED lights strobe when turn signals are on? Video appears to say "Yes"

[Bipo]

Is the same effect.

[Doug_G]

Is the same effect.

That's awesome. Even though I completely understand what is going on there, somehow I couldn't stop the feeling that it was going to drop out of the sky any second now...

[TEG]

I was pondering this whole situation a bit more and was thinking of it like the way your eyes perceive fast pulsing strobe lights.
Your eyes have some "persistence of vision" where a brief flash of an object is played out over a short length of time.
For instance if you are in a dark room, and someone takes a flash picture you can see an image left behind of what was in the flash a bit after the flash is already off.
If you have an adjustable strobe light and start turning up the pulse frequency eventually the room just looks "normally lit up" even though the strobe light is still flashing (albeit at a fast rate.)
Yes, with CRT screens that had 50 or 60 or 72 or 75 or 85 type range of refresh hz, some people would start to complain that they noticed flicker at the slower pulse rates.
It seems different people have different thresholds at which the perceived pulsing turns into a solid image.

Anyways, I think of many of these LEDs as a fast flashing strobe light. For most people, most of the time, it looks like solid, continuous light, but for cameras with high effective "shutter speeds" they can sometimes catch a still image when it is in the "off" mode. I would guess that some other animals / insects have different types of eyes that might see the LEDs flicker even though the pulse rate is very high.

As someone had mentioned before, apparently pulsing it between 100% on and 0% off very quickly results in a view that looks brighter, but uses less energy than it would use if you just ran it continuously at 60% power. Your eye "remembers" the flashes of bright view and lets you see more than it would be if you just had an always on dimmer light.

Perhaps a bit analogous to the way a radar system strobes pulses of microwaves, but shows a continuous dot on the view screen.

I guess it isn't entirely your eye that evens out the pulses though. CRT screens, and phosphors put in front of LEDs continue to glow a bit after power was stopped... Although the flashing seen by the digital cameras suggest that the LEDs do go dark rapidly. Incandescent bulbs continue to glow relatively long after power is stopped, so AC or pulsed (dimmed) incandescent bulbs don't show that telltale flicker on cameras.

[AustinPowers]

I see Audis all the time that turn the LEDs off when the turn signal is on, and it looks... broken somehow.
Tesla's design choice to dim the LEDs but not turn them off is a nice attention to detail in design, and makes me proud of my choice.

Then Audi USA handles this differently from what I'm used to.
Here in Germany, all Audis with LED DRL's do indeed dim the brightness of the LEDs when the turn signals are on, they don't switch them off. Audis with standard DRL's neither dim nor switch off those lights as they are not as bright as the LED version in the first place.

[TEG]

[MikeK]

I like those Audi tail lights much better than the Model S, I have to say. It bugs me tremendously that the S has blinking red lights for turn signals instead of amber, especially in a clear-lensed fixture where amber would have been straightforward to incorporate.

[AustinPowers]

I like those Audi tail lights much better than the Model S, I have to say. It bugs me tremendously that the S has blinking red lights for turn signals instead of amber, especially in a clear-lensed fixture where amber would have been straightforward to incorporate.

For my taste Audi in general has the best light graphics, especially rear light LED graphics, ever since they started with the A6 station wagon in 2003.
And to be honest, one of the main reasons I waited to get my 3-series coupe in 2004 were the new full LED rear lights that were only available from the 2004 model onwards. And I'm really glad to have them as they make the car (which is going strong on nine years now) look far less dated than many others without LED rear lights from that time. Now that almost any car has them, it blends right in and still looks fresh.

[Nysenn]

I was looking at some video clips that I shot at the Seattle stop of the Get Amped Tour and I noticed something strange as one of the cars pulled up to the curb. There is a rapid strobe that can be seen on the while LED lights on the same side of the car as the active turn signal. Look at the car that pulls up to the curb and you'll see what I'm talking about (especially when the car pulls into the shadows).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7_I3KqQNI&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7_I3KqQNI&feature=plcp

I think colorful led lights will work well