Can Car LiDAR Kill Your Phone Camera? The Viral Truth Explained

Remember being told not to stare into a laser pointer because it'll permanently screw up your eyes? Turns out lasers can mess up other stuff too. If your car's got a lidar sensor on it, it could totally fry the camera on your phone. The lasers lidar uses are invisible and won't hurt your eyes, but your phone's camera? That's a whole different situation.

Camera sensors (not talking about the lidar on iPhones, that's different) can actually see this laser light. Point it straight at your camera lens and you'll end up with dead pixels. The chances of this actually happening are pretty slim unless you're deliberately pointing your phone camera right at the lidar or zooming in on it.

Lidar's Lasers Can Wreck Your Camera

LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Basically it's laser tech that senses what's nearby, kind of like radar. Shoots out a quick laser burst, then measures how long it takes to bounce back. Newer cars use it to map out everything around them in 3D, which is super handy for self-driving features when dealing with snow or obstacles.

The light is infrared, so you can't actually see it. Could stand right in front of one on a car and you wouldn't notice anything unless you had a thermal camera or something. But phone cameras are sensitive enough to pick it up. When those lasers hit the camera sensor directly, they can burn it pretty bad.

There's actually a video on Reddit where someone points their phone at a Volvo EX90's lidar and watches the pixels get fried in real time when they zoom in. Video got huge, and The Drive contacted Volvo about it. Their response was basically yeah, don't point your camera at lidar sensors. The laser light can damage your camera or mess with how it works.