HEP-PPL--
Did you read the New Scientist article about (or do you already know of) that Italian chap who thinks special relativity is past its best? I'm not sure I understand it, but he seems to say that different energies of particle have their own maximum speed, and consequently c has been decaying since the very energetic start of it all... and so length can be invariant regardless of frame.
Um.
Anyway, the combination of time dilation and the various frames in classic special relativity does seem to mean that you could see the road ahead, although what you see as the road and what an observer outside your frame would see as the road would be somewhat different. You see your photons leave your headlamp at c, impinge on the road and return, and interpret the short travel time as a short road: someone outside your frame would interpret the short travel time as you getting to the returning photon almost as soon as it reflected. Is that right?
I'm down with that... but I've never understood what the photon thinks of it all. A photon travels at the speed of light and thus has no time, yet we see them as objects that travel at a finite speed and can be manipulated predictably (and how!) in real time. Could the photon's lack of time explain some of the rather spooky quantum effects of action at a distance?
R
(oh, and I Never Knew That about atmospheric muons. Pprune's a joy, innit)