The Lamp Room

A section of dual carriageway near me has been resurfaced and they have put new cats eyes in. Now I’m not sure but they look too bright to be reflectors only and I can see them even when I’m passing them by and they stretch off into the distance. I did try turning my headlights off to check but there has always been a few cars in front and behind me so it’s hard to be sure and I’ve not been able to stop and check so I might have to venture out in the middle of the night and have a look...

I must admit though with LED’s becoming quite bright even at low currents, I’m surprised nobody had made something like that, all you’d need is a decent sized lithium cell and a solar panel.

Anybody seen or know anything about these?

*edit*Just googled and found the law was changed a few years ago to allow this and has been trialed in places but it’s the first I’ve seen of heard of it tbh. They do look very impressive tbh.

Good clean retroreflectors (both the glass bead type embedded in paint, and the label with triple mirror cells that is used for most cat eyes and signs) do reflect very brightly. As they age and get dirty i guess they scatter more the reflected light, so it seems fainter..

So just freshly fitted plain cat eyes allready stand out in their brightness

How much brighter (or different in color ?) are the supposedly solar LED lights ?

Atleast over there they suffice with cat eyes on unlit roads. Here they appear to have set a goal of lighting every road no matter what, as if cars dont have headlights.. (they do fit proper cat eyes though)

Oh i thought id submitted my reply :0

They could be solar, theres a road by me i think its the A688 and they installed solar power cats eyes, each cats eye has a solarpanel and 2 LEDs, i cant remember where exactly they are but if i come across them i will try and get photos from the car, its a busy road so photos might be rubbish as i dont want to get squashed if i bike it

A section of the A3 has these, they've been there y a number of years. Think they were installed as a trial. You can see them in your rear view mirror, still lit behind you.

LED only or LED + the standard retroreflector label ?

Parts of the A1 in County Durham has them too

Noticed a slight flicker when they are in the corner of your eye when you go past at speed so they must be doing some PWM duty cycle trickery to try and extend the battery life to the fullest. There is a bridge so I’ll try and get a shot tonight.

I saw some of these when I went to Turkey.
They're quite impressive on a long road but I wonder if they're just LEDs or a combo of the LED with the reflective material.
That way if they failed they'd go on working as normal cat eyes.

These ones are reflectors with an LED module in the middle. I didn't go last night because I was on the beer and I'm not going out tonight as I'm on the whisky...

They have just been installed at the Switch Island Junction in Maghull and seem to be linked to the traffic lights. As they change to green they are activated for the road ahead, I may even have some dashcam footage, will have to check later. And it looks like they have then on the Knowsley expressway before the M57, a route I travel several times a week. I must say that I quite like them and find them helpful, an ideal application for LEDs.