LED light bulbs are the future. They're better for the environment and the pocket book. But for some people, certain LEDs lights — particularly holiday lights—are also a problem. They flicker in a way that causes headaches, nausea and other discomfort. Today, we visit the "Flicker Queen" to learn why LEDs flicker — and what you can do about it.Wondering about other quirks of lighting and engineering? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we might cover it on a future episode!
You can too often see the same thing in LED car headlights and tail lights. The most obnoxious of these flicker noticeably all the time. Not much better are the ones that seem to be on continuously when viewed in the center of your vision, but flicker in your peripheral vision. The later I find really distracting
I can’t recall seeing any legal head or tail lights that have flickering issues. We will hopefully see this issue less and less as people are no longer allowed to buy the illegal retrofit kits from places that sell headlights. We’ve seen a lot less people running the Sylvania super bright off-road lights now that you’re not allowed to buy them from the headlight section of an auto parts store and online stores are not allowed to sell them without off-road use popup warnings.
I really wish that instead of useless trash like drunk driver checkpoints midweek we would start seeing headlight inspection points or other vehicle inspection points to check for safety issues like these; if we’re going to keep having these checkpoints for no reason.
On digital rear view mirrors you can really see the flicker on some headlights and DRL because of the framerate of the camera. Most cars are fine but some aftermarket headlights and GMC/Chevy(IIRC) are very noticable.