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Dim tail lights

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I was almost rear ended yesterday which got me to thinking about brighter tail lights. Has anyone used LED bulbs?
 
Yes, but took them back out. While brighter looking at them straight on, they were much dimmer or not visible at all except from that angle. Perhaps there's a difference in the way design of the lens interior disperses the light. Tried them also on several motorcycles, and had the same situation, as reported from people following me.
 
The guy that I bought mine from had uni-directional as well as a dispersed pattern, for 180 degree illumination. If your interested, I'll look the guy up. If I remember he was very responsive to techinical questions via email.
 
This taken from the Super Brights website:

"LED bulbs are generally not as bright as standard incandescent bulbs, they have many advantages over filament bulbs (longer life, faster on/off times, lower power consumption, more vivid colors) but brightness is not one of them
They are generally not as bright but some of them with large numbers of LEDs, will appear brighter than filament bulbs.
The light is distributed differently so they can appear brighter in some applications.
Most LED bulbs emit light like a flashlight, all out the end. Regular filament bulbs emit light from the end and all sides, so they will be better suited for some lighting applications that LED bulbs.
This is the same reason why we do not rate LED car bulbs in lumens or watts, they would be a deceptively low numbers because the light is measured from all sides and the end on standard filament bulbs but only from the end on LED bulbs"
 
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