There is an incentive to use higher power. Push the edge of safety limits to achieve higher performance from lower cost devices, for example.

It occurs to me there is an opportunity here. Passive lidar detectors sampling fleets of vehicles in the real world, measuring compliance and detecting outliers, would be interesting. A well placed, stationary device could sample thousands of vehicles every day. Patterns will emerge among manufacturers. Failure modes will be seen.

Cursory queries on this reveal nothing. Apparently, no one is doing this. We're all relying on front end certification and compliance. No thought given to the real world of design flaws, damage, faulty repairs, unanticipated failure modes, etc.

Apparently there are lidar jammers. I bet those are rigorously compliant with Class 1 safety regs... No one manufacturing those is ever going to think; "hey, why not a 50W pulse train?"