We ran across this image randomly poking around on Reddit (which is what passes for work around here), and we absolutely had to figure out what it was. Turns out, Audi has been working on a way to augment fog lights with laser beams in the name of safety, and this is what it's come up with.
Adding lasers to fog lights isn't just for visibility: Audi, in its infinitely Germanic wisdom, has decreed that this laser system shall project a line unto the actual road, and across that line other cars shall not pass. Or something like that. The projected laser line ends up at a safe following distance, and in heavy fog, the light refracts through the water droplets in the air and forms a large warning triangle.
Audi says that it's got a bunch of engineers working to take this type of thing off of the drawing board and get it into some of its cars. The company is working on other light-based technologies that might be slightly less violent on your eyeballs, such as headlights made up of arrays of LEDs that can individually point themselves to avoid oncoming drivers. You can see several of these concepts in action in the video below; the laser fog lights show up at about 40 seconds in.
Audi, via Reddit
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