Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Most every LED I've seen or used has very little side spill.
Got that right! Most commercial LED lights use a very narrow round flashlight type pattern. This allows for high claimed lumen numbers. Great for flashlights, bad for everything else. If you DIY your own LED light you can use a Fraen 15 degree by 30 degree lens and holder which produces the perfect pattern for road use. Combine it with a 10 degree narrow lens and holder and you get the perfect pattern. LED technology is progressing so rapidly that commercial light manufacturers can't keep up and are not even trying. Investing in new equipment to produce large numbers of lights just to have them become obsolete in a few months would quickly put them out of business. This may change with the introduction of the new SSC P7 LED with an advertised 900 lumen output. This is the legal limit in most states for vehicle headlight bulbs. This would allow commercial manufacturers to produce a standard light that would never be eclipsed in performance.

Fraen LED optics