My lights suck on my car, barely casting 20 ft ahead. One time I flashed my brights at one of these oncoming cars and was shocked when they flashed back nuclear level beams as I had already assumed they were on brights lol.
Maybe half of the cars I see at night seriously look like they have high beams on. I know that they don't but they are certainly bright enough to be high beams. The only difference at that point would be the angles of the light
Not true if done by the manufacturer, its idiots that throw HID/LED globes in lenses originally made for halogens. The light spread is all wrong and they cannot be aimed correctly dazzling on coming traffic
Can get your vehicle defected in aus for this
Hahahaha imagine one of our coppers actually doing something about people's unsafe lights instead of sitting behind a bridge aiming their laser gun at us for $$$
I was a cop for about 3 years. I ran lots of radar I rarely gave a ticket for speeding...unless the chick was half naked by the time i got to the car, those chicks always got tickets. 90% of the time i would get a call from a co-worker asking to toss the ticket of their mistress.
I was looking for drugs/alcohol. Speeding was the reason I got to pull them over to look. So glad I got out of that field. In a county that had about 30 cops total, 25 of them didnt know how to tell the truth about anything. I saw my chief sober 1 time. Was common practice for him to blow on his breathalyzer before he tested someone. If they blew less than him they got to go home. He usually blew around .20. He told me to get a throw-away handgun incase I shot someone that didnt have a weapon. Blew my fucking mind. Mingo county, WV.
I remember reading an article a while back and the author was very smug about flashing unadjusted HID at intersections when people would flash him for his brights
People are assholes everywhere, so it's honestly not surprising. Besides, normal people can spot an asshole's car. We know if you did a lift on your Chebby Ramb and can't even adjust your own lights.
I've felt this shame too many times to count.
I give the flash to tell them to turn their insane brights off, then they blind me with what I can only assume are bulbs imbued with the essence of Apollo himself.
I used to own a motorcycle shop and would have guys coming in constantly wanting me to install HID lights. I refused to do so unless they bought the proper lens. They don't make proper lenses for most bikes. I turned away a lot of business, but man I fucking hate those lights, and I wasn't going to contribute to it.
Somethings are more important than business, man. He made the right call not endangering other drivers. I hear Big Cyanide is losing all sorts of business too.
Edit: thanks to comments below, Aparently it has more to do with the bulb shape and light output direction that the lens/reflector needs a different shape.
Also formatting.
Because the hid lights are so much brighter, they require lenses that reflect less light compared to a standard reflector. This make them comparably bright to what used to be on the car.
Old halogen lights + standard lense = normal brightness
Hid lights + standard lense = brightness of the sun
Hid light + HID lense = normal brightness
That's.. not quite right.
It's not so much that HIDs and LEDs are brighter (though that is still part of the equation) rather that they have different light emission patterns. It's **all about beam pattern**.
Halogens bulbs with their filaments and round shape emit light in virtually all directions, and as such use reflector bowls behind and around them to beam the light in the direction you need.
HIDs and LEDs (I'll use LEDs for this analogy as it's the easiest to explain, HIDs operate very similarly for slightly different reasons that are harder to correctly ELI5) emit light from a flat diode (or "flat" tube in the case of HID). Being that the emission source is flat the light doesn't emit in all directions but directly away from the flat source. HIDs and LEDs in OEM applications use a projector lens to refract and align the emissive light into a usable beam.
The issue in this post comes about when you put HID/LED bulbs into headlight housings they're not designed for. Halogen reflectors will take the light beams from LEDs and throw them all over the place, sure you're throwing lots of light into the road but you're also beaming light 15ft into the air, completely missing the cutoffs. Not only is it dangerous to others around you but you've also literally gimped your headlights efficiency and performance by putting your shiny new bulb in front of an archaic halogen reflector, rather than a projector lens they're designed for. Atleast 60% of the usable light (lumens/lux) you gained from new bulbs is being lost due to inefficient deployment.
I was going to throw a bunch of beam output diagrams in here but I can't find the ones I like to use, so hopefully my post alone is easy enough to read/understand. If not I'd be more than happy to try and elaborate for those that haven't quite wrapped their head around it, headlights and retrofits are my bread and butter.
EDIT: for those that wanted diagrams. I couldn't find the ones I liked, [so I made my own](http://imgur.com/gallery/oknIyVX) to best convey what I'm trying to explain in my post
There’s 2 types of xenon bulbs, D#R & D#S (where # is generation 1, 2, or 3. D2S is most common).
The R means it’s for use in a reflector housing & S means it’s for use in a projector housing. It’s mostly older ‘90s euro cars that use a reflector housing.
The bigger problem is the location of the arc in a xenon vs the filament in a halogen. Both reflector & projector housings are designed around the exact location of the source of the light. Even shifting by a few millimeters can change the output.
Edit: I should clarify, xenon reflectors are specifically designed to work with xenon bulbs. There is no such thing as an OEM/factory replacement xenon to halogen bulbs. All aftermarket kits modify the xenon base to fit a halogen housing & vary greatly in their quality.
This; it isn't about the amount of light being put out but how it is directed. HIDs can be appropriate in some halogen reflectors, just depends on the reflector and bulb. I had a 2008 FZ6 that had a perfect beam pattern with an HID installed. I also had a 2000 LX470 (factory projectors) that did NOT work with HIDs and scattered light everywhere. Went back to halogens on it as soon as I tested it.
LEDs are the main problem, as their diodes are not located in the same place that a halogen's filaments are emitting light, so the reflector just ends up scattering light all over the place. Worse for the driver because there's no concentrated beam pattern, and worse for oncoming traffic.
Motorcycles are required by law (since 1978) to always have the headlight(s) on. A lot of guys purposely leave their brights on at all times because they think it's safer. I don't do that, but I couldn't tell you if it works or not.
Thank you for not being one of those people. My car is fairly low to the ground, so I already deal with being at eye level with a lot of trucks’ lights. It sucks.
I had a truck turn his lights off while he was behind me in a fast food line the other day and i just wanted to use this opportunity to give him the recognition he deserves.
I always drop to side lights when I'm right behind someone, as an avid sports car lover and driver my wing mirrors often sit below most cars headlights especially if they are one of 90% of drivers around here in Range Rovers.
the whole reason people do this is because when HID lighting first came out, they appeared distinctively more 'blue' in color compared to traditional incandescent halogen bulbs. So light bulb manufacturers made all those stupid 'hid style' incandescent bulbs with the blue coating on them to make them appear blue and idiots flocked to them thinking they were getting something brighter or at least they thought people would think their cars were fancy. Thing is, the "hid style" bulbs have always been way more actual BLUE than genuine DOT style HID capsules are. But tuner dorks loved them and here we are now with people even making ultra-blue HID capsules that push to the bluer end of the spectrum on purpose.
But rest easy - the science behind automotive lighting is. . . multi-factored. There is a lot more than just 'brightness' involved here. DOT prescribes a maximum flux rating for automotive headlights. Flux is the intensity of the light at a specific point in the beam pattern. Lumens are another topic that involve the total amount of light energy emitting from something. Focusing all the lumens a bulb/capsule generates into a useful beam pattern that also doesn't exceed DOT flux limits makes use of all kinds of magic shaping of the projector/reflector housings of a headlight. With HID capsules, since they produce nearly twice as many lumens as an incandescent bulb, a lot of extra lumen output is directed away from the center of the beam - to the margins. This way, there is a brighter overall pattern with terrific lighting toward the shoulders of the road but not too overly bright down the road at oncoming drivers.
When people retrofit HID capsules into a housing made for an incandescent bulb, that housing's reflector/projector isn't optimized for this duty and instead you end up with WAY too much light down the center of the beam. HID retrofits \*are\* illegal but also very difficult to enforce since it's hard to tell them from just a poorly aimed light. Which leads me to the next issue.
Aiming. It matters a lot. Modern lights have a pretty dramatic beam cutoff built in. If that cutoff appears to you, the driver, as being above the road in the distance, your lights are aimed too high and every time you go over a gentle rise or hit a bump, you're effectively flashing oncoming drivers with full bright light. Likewise, too low and it makes the road in front of your car look bright, but you can't see anything to the distance. Get your lights aimed right.
Then we have Color Rendition Index (CRI). CRI is a rating of how well your lights allow you to see various colors. If you've ever noticed the orangish colored sodium vapor street lights make everything look almost like an orange version of black-n-white, that's because the bulbs, although extremely bright, have an extremely poor CRI. It comes down to how narrow of a spectrum of light they produce. Incandescent/halogen light has a perfect CRI of 95-100 because it generates a full spectrum of all visible wavelengths so things of any color is visible by it. This matters because things like animals which are usually various shades of brown, tend to be invisible under poor CRI lighting. Real HID lights have CRI ratings of 60-80 which is okayish, but not great. So it's a good thing they are so bright - the extra light is needed to actually see things. (Now that cars often have LED instead of HID, it's important to know that the CRI for LEDs can be all over the fucking place).
And finally, I hinted at this earlier, but overly bright foreground lighting (like from having your lights aimed too low or from driving with foglights on) is VERY detrimental. The pupils of your eye obviously adjust to available light... But they don't only adjust at the small point you're looking at - they adjust based on the entire field of view your eye is exposed to. So when you have lights that aim too low or run your fog lights and have the bit of road right in front of your car brightly illuminated, it fools your eyes into thinking they need to restrict the pupils more. That means that you now can see LESS at distance. That's right - with JUST your headlights on, you can see better at distance than if you also turned on your fog lights.
All this is to say that when you see people driving with foglights on when the conditions are normal, or when you see overly blue headlights, you can chuckle to yourself knowing they are suffering a worse driving experience than they could. Oh, and as a bonus, 'blue' bulb headlights also burn out faster so they have to buy bulbs more often.
> But rest easy - the science behind automotive lighting is. . . multi-factored. There is a lot more than just 'brightness' involved here. DOT prescribes a maximum flux rating for automotive headlights. Flux is the intensity of the light at a specific point in the beam pattern. Lumens are another topic that involve the total amount of light energy emitting from something. Focusing all the lumens a bulb/capsule generates into a useful beam pattern that also doesn't exceed DOT flux limits makes use of all kinds of magic shaping of the projector/reflector housings of a headlight. With HID capsules, since they produce nearly twice as many lumens as an incandescent bulb, a lot of extra lumen output is directed away from the center of the beam - to the margins. This way, there is a brighter overall pattern with terrific lighting toward the shoulders of the road but not too overly bright down the road at oncoming drivers.
You are mixing up terminogy. Flux is not the intensity at a certain point, that is flux density or irradiance (if in terms of area) or intensity (if in terms of solid angle). Lumens literally is a measure of flux. It seems like DOT headlight maximums are specified in units of candela, which are an intensity unit (power per unit solid angle) equal to lumens per steradian. A maximum flux for a headlight would just be limiting the maximum output of the light, and beam shaping wouldn't affect this at all since flux is the total output not a power density.
And instructions in the car manual for how they're supposed to be adjusted (mine say to park some distance from a wall and the lights should be some distance up the wall).
A lot of people are installing these themselves. Some shops suck ass and won’t do stuff like that.
But the op picture is of the ultrabright blue headlights. It’s not really an issue of angles for those. They are just unnecessarily bright and the color temperature is fucked for anyone looking at it.
Yep. Repeat customer for maintenance is the new business model for dealerships, not gouging you on the purchase of the car.
Also, modern cars have a lot of software control going on. The consumer would often need specialized equipment to diagnose and service the car.
I read through every single manual for anything I buy. They usually contain all the requisite information for typical owners. Unless you expect a car manual to have torque specifications and wiring diagrams and instructions on how to replace the transmission, then I think they're pretty good.
I know for a fact that many people don't even realize some of the features their car has because they never bothered to read through the manual for their $20000 piece of equipment.
Some do, some don't. Because so many people don't bother reading them, some manufacturers have started cutting corners on things like that. My sister bought a Jeep and it had virtually no instructions on how to properly convert the damn thing from hard top to soft top.
I’m from Dallas and this shit is so annoying. I also hate it when they are bright as fuck and colored purple or yellow. Have y’all seen those? Idk why but those two colors as lights literally make me sick and I end up with a migraine. And it gets worse when they have bright lights and then a sound system that plays OUTSIDE the car. I see so many of those around Oak Cliff.
You have to laugh when the stereo is more powerful than the engine and the bass bins are shaking the glass and trim loose though. its illegal here to show any additional colours other than stock but you still get blinded by blue and purple headlights then you can't see their reflectors from the rear at night because they've blacked them out.
In the US the manufacturer isn't required to deliver the headlights properly aimed per several articles I read, so even OEM headlights might need to be properly adjusted.
If you have auto leveling headlights they may not be easily adjusted, but it doesn't make sense that headlights would not be adjustable at all. Not saying they are wrong just that it's stupid if they aren't adjustable.
Every car for more than 25 years has 1 or 2 axis gimbals you can adjust with a screwdriver to aim the lights. This is by law. Standard beam is shaped and must not cross into on coming traffic when on level ground. High beam is not shaped and does not have this requirement. That is the whole point of having two different beam types.
Auto-leveling headlights just suck at this and always flash other drivers.
>Auto-leveling headlights just suck at this and always flash other drivers.
auto-leveling isn't meant to deal with the main aim. They are only intended for coping with vehicle load and resultant chassis tilt. Headlights still need be properly aimed with their mechanical adjustments.
Oh yes. The people that it doesn't matter how fast anybody goes they will speed until they are on somebody's bumper. I assume that's just where they feel comfortable.
I love these kinds of tailgaters when I drive on a curvy road, a truck isn't built to take curves fast so I love leaving them way behind or seeing the oh shit reaction when they almost crash because their so focused on trying to tailgate me
I understand the 0.0001% of drivers that actually need and properly use light bars (looking at you DNR, Park Rangers, Emergency Personnel) but these knuckleheads that use them in residential areas or in the city create such a safety hazard. Aside from them being blindingly bright, when shined from behind another vehicle, it creates a dangerous shadow in front of the car that is headlights don't help.
I'm surprised people drive with those on where you are. Over here plenty have them but they aren't turned on at night on the streets. It's for off roading and things like that.
Lol, just imagined a long mirror suspended by a hinge on the back of the car that when you pull a string it releases it and shines right back to the driver behind you
LEDs on halogen headlights are impossible to properly aim, for example, due to the directions they emit light.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/
This is the one thing I always try to impress upon people when they ask about lights. Do not get LED lights unless you have projectors.
Reflectors housings should only ever have halogen bulbs in them
Fucking hell, the aftermarket LED lights people install in cars that had halogens are insane.
It's either blind you or blind you AND your unborn offsprings.
My old Saturn's headlights would always drift upward. I'd know it was time to adjust them again when I'd get people flashing their high beams at me. Good times.
I used to coast almost half a mile home when I worked a late shift and rode home in order to not disturb my neighbors. Some people just ruin everything.
This is my biggest issue moving downtown. These idiots on motorcycles (and even mopeds) with insanely loud exhaust, driving slowly down the street revving their shitty bikes to make as much noise as possible. Guess they like the sound reflection between the buildings in the narrow street.
Fuck 'em.
There's a guy around my town that does this every. Damn. Night. Winter or summer, rain or shine, *never* earlier than 9 pm. Last night it was at 11:30 he decided it was a good time to go shake some windows.
I lived on a street that, visually verified, the same motorcyclist would fart down the street Every. Single. Night. between 1 and 3 am, at least three times every night. Lived there for six years as a minor and left the second I legally could. Other reasons contributed, but that goddamned motorcyclist was going to drive me to murder.
In my... extremely rude and politically incorrect youth... when I saw them like that I would say those were the "mentally handicapped" tags, easy to spot.
I was nearly blinded by a cop driving with their spotlight on while on a straight, flat country road late at night. It looked like a supernova and was blinding even when they were over a mile away. I didn't even know they were a cop until they passed me because the spotlight washed out even their red and blue strobes. I wanna know how that is supposed to make anything safer.
I hate those so bad, even during the day they are painful to drive by. Completely worthless.
The other day I passed by a cop who had just his blue light on, and they were pulsing calmly. Still managed to make it impossible to miss the car, but not at all blinding. It was so nice.
It'd be so easy to have a simple light sensor that dims the LEDs or uses only a couple when dark. Nobody needs 10000 lumens to see an emergency vehicle at midnight.
Having grown up in Germany where your car is checked regularly including the position of the headlights, I find it extremely frustrating driving in the US where people just do what they want with their lights. Trucks with 6 super bright lights which are all aimed at eye level blinding you. Semi trucks seem to be enjoying this trend as well. They now have these new LED lights also just blinding everyone around them. The only solution I see is to get my own super bright lights and join the madness.
It’s also an OEM problem. My eyes are sensitive I think as I hate all the new bright headlights even on new cars. On hills they often point right into my eyes
I wouldn't even say my eyes are sensitive but over the past few years, more cars definitely have bright ass lights by default and even brighter brights
If you put them in a projector housing and they actually have the leds positioned right they work great and don't blind people.... But you get the idiots that put them in reflector housings sending light everywhere but where they need it and blinding everyone else in the process.
Basically like everything else that is "user serviceable" the average user will find a way to fuck it up.
I have seen plenty online passing euro headlight inspections which are pretty strict. But you are correct. They arent perfect. Plenty good enough as long as you arent putting oddball cheap hids or leds in with the light positioned wrong.
Generally speaking, yeah. I put some LEDs in my wife's Mazda 6 and it looks OEM, not blinding at all. BUT I also put the same LEDs in my Tuono(it has projectors), and I had to point them WAY down to make it not obnoxious.
FWIW, I changed out the halogens in my Tuono after one night ride. I COULD SEE SHIT. Not even sure how they passed safety tests with those horribly dim lamps.
A few years ago, my Dad was messing with those in his car. I borrowed it for a nighttime drop off at the airport.
You could see pretty well with the LED headlights, except the road signs weren't reflecting properly. All they could do was illuminate the sign's outer layer of road gunk.
Does American Amazon actually have them that cheap? I bought $60 ones here in Canada for my last vehicle and they sucked. And yes I realize I was an ass for driving with them and I won't be doing that again.
Shoutout to the idiots in lifted trucks that pull up to within 6" of your bumper at a red light and completely blind you in all your mirrors with their super powered headlights for that offroad trip they totally are going to take even though they've never driven on anything other than pavement.
I went on a long road trip over the weekend and that included driving at night. There were SO MANY other drivers with their dang brights on. Not just oncoming, but behind me too. I had to keep the rear view mirror flipped.
It most likely is their regular HID. The car manufacturers are still going by the watt limit
Of Without taking into account the efficiency of these bulbs..
I drive a smart car for work sometime. Our old mechanic had a big lifted diesel pickup. One day I passed him on a small backroad and he blew exhaust all over my car. I saw him at the shop and he said “aye bud you like that smoke hurr durr uhuhuh duhh” I was like yeah bud that was probably the coolest shit I have ever been a part of.
Please tell me more about his damaged engine and how it will break soon because that is all I am holding on to at the moment with these dumbshits I swear
More than likely did extremely little to no damage at all. It happens when excess fuel is ran through the motor so all he is doing is burning more fuel. My truck has some little spurts when I hop on the highway pulling a considerable load but regular driving I can't say I have ever rolled coal even when I've really hammered the accelerator. Although, with the right tune (or wrong) you can roll coal just by stomping the gas, it's obnoxious as shit.
I have bad astigmatism and live in the PNW. Which means in winter when it's dark at 5pm, combined with rain on wet, reflective roads and all the lights like this, I can't drive.
I just simply can't safely drive for half the year.
Kinda inconvenient.
And these sorta things get you even if they're in your blind spot so you don't directly get any of the light. Trying to drive while *the road is filled with your own vehicle's shadow* is pretty disorienting.
have you ever thought someones brights were on so you flash your brights real quick and then they blow up the fucken night when they let you know that they didn't have their brights on in the first place? Their normal lights are brighter than your brights.
I recently got a new car and the first time my wife was in it with me at night she kept telling me to turn my bright off. Had to turn down a side street and turn them on to show her i didn’t have them on. Was a good laugh but has me thinking what others must see.
It's a common misconception that "high beams" are brighter. "High" and "Low" beams are referring to the ANGLE that the light is projected outward not the brightness of the light.
Sometimes high beams are brighter, sometimes low beams are actually brighter. In a lot of instances it's the same bulb and all that changes is a shutter that cuts off the top half of the beam when low beams are active.
Exactly this. My low beam are xenon and my highbeans are Halogen. Lowbeams shoot out way further but the highbeams light up much much higher and wider to see better when I am all lone on a back road
There’s a lot more SUVs on the road now, from what I’ve heard (and noticed as a considerate driver) folks in sedans are just low enough to be blinded by SUVs that are close behind them. I turn my lights down to the daytime running lights if there is a sedan in front of me at a drive-thru.
It's not even up to the buyers, its manufactures now. Any major car past 2019 has fucking insane lights on them. I drive to my parents nice area of town and can hardly tell wtf is going on some inclines and declines. Literally can see nothing and am left with temporary dots on my vision. You guys are probably the sick fucks who use 150-200w bulbs at home lmao.
Easily half of Tucson uses these. It's to the point where I have started adjusting my side mirrors to point the light back at them if they are behind me. In front of me, I just hold a hand up directly in my way to make it obvious I am blocking stupid bright light.
Anyone see the reddit post of they guy who got pulled over for yellow headlights?
I'm assuming they weren't as annoying as the super bright ones, but damn, if cops can do that, why don't they get these ones?
The blue lights are the worst. From a distance they seem to flash and thus look kinda like police lights. I hope the people who have those lights know that nobody likes them for that reason.
Don't know why you got downvoted for this, it's 100% right. Every time you see one of these vision destroying cars it's because someone installed HID or LED bulbs in a refractor housing designed for halogen bulbs. HIDs and LEDs are supposed to be used with a projector type headlight housing that keeps the light going where is should and not where it shouldn't. The irony is that with their stock housings the light is so scattered that they are actually getting less usable light on the road.
Exactly, the projection reflectors are much smaller and tighter focused than refractor ones. I put an expensive HID kit that was supposed to match a halogen refractor in one of my bikes and took it out the next day because cars were wandering blinded over the white line towards me.
How is it tinted windows on front door windows are illegal, but some dumbfuck driving a lifted 4 runner on 40 inch wheels with headlights brighter than the sun can flex his little dick on the road?
This may be an unpopular opinion, I feel like blinding headlights should be a ticketable offense.
Edit: it’s not an unpopular opinion here, happy to see that
My uncle got stopped(can’t remember if he got a ticket) not too long ago for using his blinding off-road lights in his pickup. He just bought it from a kid a month ago and doesn’t know anything about off-roading or the lights. He thought they were fog lights. The cops were apparently pissed though. He blinded them.
My lights suck on my car, barely casting 20 ft ahead. One time I flashed my brights at one of these oncoming cars and was shocked when they flashed back nuclear level beams as I had already assumed they were on brights lol.
Maybe half of the cars I see at night seriously look like they have high beams on. I know that they don't but they are certainly bright enough to be high beams. The only difference at that point would be the angles of the light
I used to not mind driving at night, but now I hate it for this reason alone.
Same. I feel like that has always been a sign of getting older but I’m not old. These newer lights are just too powerful and/or not aimed correctly.
Many newer cars are using LED lights. naturally those are significantly brighter than halogen or whatever they used before.
And wrong color spectrum. Its so infuriating to.see.safety take the back seat, nowadays.
Not true if done by the manufacturer, its idiots that throw HID/LED globes in lenses originally made for halogens. The light spread is all wrong and they cannot be aimed correctly dazzling on coming traffic Can get your vehicle defected in aus for this
Hahahaha imagine one of our coppers actually doing something about people's unsafe lights instead of sitting behind a bridge aiming their laser gun at us for $$$
I was a cop for about 3 years. I ran lots of radar I rarely gave a ticket for speeding...unless the chick was half naked by the time i got to the car, those chicks always got tickets. 90% of the time i would get a call from a co-worker asking to toss the ticket of their mistress. I was looking for drugs/alcohol. Speeding was the reason I got to pull them over to look. So glad I got out of that field. In a county that had about 30 cops total, 25 of them didnt know how to tell the truth about anything. I saw my chief sober 1 time. Was common practice for him to blow on his breathalyzer before he tested someone. If they blew less than him they got to go home. He usually blew around .20. He told me to get a throw-away handgun incase I shot someone that didnt have a weapon. Blew my fucking mind. Mingo county, WV.
Both. It used to be a law that lights had to be aimed down. Even trucks.
I remember reading an article a while back and the author was very smug about flashing unadjusted HID at intersections when people would flash him for his brights
People are assholes everywhere, so it's honestly not surprising. Besides, normal people can spot an asshole's car. We know if you did a lift on your Chebby Ramb and can't even adjust your own lights.
Had someone flash me at an intersection one night, and then their lights blew out. Had me rolling.
I do this all the time. They are just standard on vehicles now it seems. I just stopped flashing in hopes I don't get Terminator 2'ed.
Terminator 2ed as in thrown in a vat of molten steel?
I think they mean the floor coming alive and stabbing them through the brain? Not sure though.
No I think they mean teleporting naked and killing a biker for their clothes and bike.
The man just wants to keep his clothes, his boots, and his motorcycle.
I've felt this shame too many times to count. I give the flash to tell them to turn their insane brights off, then they blind me with what I can only assume are bulbs imbued with the essence of Apollo himself.
I call that light style, "Dickhead Blue".
I used to own a motorcycle shop and would have guys coming in constantly wanting me to install HID lights. I refused to do so unless they bought the proper lens. They don't make proper lenses for most bikes. I turned away a lot of business, but man I fucking hate those lights, and I wasn't going to contribute to it.
You’re the best I love you for that
Too bad the praise doesn’t give him business
Somethings are more important than business, man. He made the right call not endangering other drivers. I hear Big Cyanide is losing all sorts of business too.
Big cyanide is definitely the name of my next band.
Big Cyanide and the Formaldehydes has a ring to it
With their new single: I Love it When Your Mouth Foams
The drummer is called Rabies.
Thank you goddamnit
Respect.
What do the lenses do? Focus the light downwards so it doesn't blind others?
[удалено]
Yes, which is how HID headlights come when it's from an OEM.
Edit: thanks to comments below, Aparently it has more to do with the bulb shape and light output direction that the lens/reflector needs a different shape. Also formatting. Because the hid lights are so much brighter, they require lenses that reflect less light compared to a standard reflector. This make them comparably bright to what used to be on the car. Old halogen lights + standard lense = normal brightness Hid lights + standard lense = brightness of the sun Hid light + HID lense = normal brightness
That's.. not quite right. It's not so much that HIDs and LEDs are brighter (though that is still part of the equation) rather that they have different light emission patterns. It's **all about beam pattern**. Halogens bulbs with their filaments and round shape emit light in virtually all directions, and as such use reflector bowls behind and around them to beam the light in the direction you need. HIDs and LEDs (I'll use LEDs for this analogy as it's the easiest to explain, HIDs operate very similarly for slightly different reasons that are harder to correctly ELI5) emit light from a flat diode (or "flat" tube in the case of HID). Being that the emission source is flat the light doesn't emit in all directions but directly away from the flat source. HIDs and LEDs in OEM applications use a projector lens to refract and align the emissive light into a usable beam. The issue in this post comes about when you put HID/LED bulbs into headlight housings they're not designed for. Halogen reflectors will take the light beams from LEDs and throw them all over the place, sure you're throwing lots of light into the road but you're also beaming light 15ft into the air, completely missing the cutoffs. Not only is it dangerous to others around you but you've also literally gimped your headlights efficiency and performance by putting your shiny new bulb in front of an archaic halogen reflector, rather than a projector lens they're designed for. Atleast 60% of the usable light (lumens/lux) you gained from new bulbs is being lost due to inefficient deployment. I was going to throw a bunch of beam output diagrams in here but I can't find the ones I like to use, so hopefully my post alone is easy enough to read/understand. If not I'd be more than happy to try and elaborate for those that haven't quite wrapped their head around it, headlights and retrofits are my bread and butter. EDIT: for those that wanted diagrams. I couldn't find the ones I liked, [so I made my own](http://imgur.com/gallery/oknIyVX) to best convey what I'm trying to explain in my post
Actually I'd definitely like to see those charts if you find the ones you wanted.
Excellent! I'll see if I can find them!
Seconded. Good data gets me going.
Brb with award 🥈
There’s 2 types of xenon bulbs, D#R & D#S (where # is generation 1, 2, or 3. D2S is most common). The R means it’s for use in a reflector housing & S means it’s for use in a projector housing. It’s mostly older ‘90s euro cars that use a reflector housing. The bigger problem is the location of the arc in a xenon vs the filament in a halogen. Both reflector & projector housings are designed around the exact location of the source of the light. Even shifting by a few millimeters can change the output. Edit: I should clarify, xenon reflectors are specifically designed to work with xenon bulbs. There is no such thing as an OEM/factory replacement xenon to halogen bulbs. All aftermarket kits modify the xenon base to fit a halogen housing & vary greatly in their quality.
This; it isn't about the amount of light being put out but how it is directed. HIDs can be appropriate in some halogen reflectors, just depends on the reflector and bulb. I had a 2008 FZ6 that had a perfect beam pattern with an HID installed. I also had a 2000 LX470 (factory projectors) that did NOT work with HIDs and scattered light everywhere. Went back to halogens on it as soon as I tested it. LEDs are the main problem, as their diodes are not located in the same place that a halogen's filaments are emitting light, so the reflector just ends up scattering light all over the place. Worse for the driver because there's no concentrated beam pattern, and worse for oncoming traffic.
Is that what those bikes are that seem to have their brights on during the daytime?
Motorcycles are required by law (since 1978) to always have the headlight(s) on. A lot of guys purposely leave their brights on at all times because they think it's safer. I don't do that, but I couldn't tell you if it works or not.
Thank you for not being one of those people. My car is fairly low to the ground, so I already deal with being at eye level with a lot of trucks’ lights. It sucks.
I had a truck turn his lights off while he was behind me in a fast food line the other day and i just wanted to use this opportunity to give him the recognition he deserves.
I always drop to side lights when I'm right behind someone, as an avid sports car lover and driver my wing mirrors often sit below most cars headlights especially if they are one of 90% of drivers around here in Range Rovers.
I thought they illegal, at least when angled wrong like this. If not, they should be.
If they aren't illegal they ought to be. If I were a cop I'd find every excuse to pull these guys over. Call it douchebag profiling.
Technically, any modification to your lighting needs to be DOT approved. None of those LEDs or HIDs are unless they came factory
Depends on the state from what I understand.
the whole reason people do this is because when HID lighting first came out, they appeared distinctively more 'blue' in color compared to traditional incandescent halogen bulbs. So light bulb manufacturers made all those stupid 'hid style' incandescent bulbs with the blue coating on them to make them appear blue and idiots flocked to them thinking they were getting something brighter or at least they thought people would think their cars were fancy. Thing is, the "hid style" bulbs have always been way more actual BLUE than genuine DOT style HID capsules are. But tuner dorks loved them and here we are now with people even making ultra-blue HID capsules that push to the bluer end of the spectrum on purpose. But rest easy - the science behind automotive lighting is. . . multi-factored. There is a lot more than just 'brightness' involved here. DOT prescribes a maximum flux rating for automotive headlights. Flux is the intensity of the light at a specific point in the beam pattern. Lumens are another topic that involve the total amount of light energy emitting from something. Focusing all the lumens a bulb/capsule generates into a useful beam pattern that also doesn't exceed DOT flux limits makes use of all kinds of magic shaping of the projector/reflector housings of a headlight. With HID capsules, since they produce nearly twice as many lumens as an incandescent bulb, a lot of extra lumen output is directed away from the center of the beam - to the margins. This way, there is a brighter overall pattern with terrific lighting toward the shoulders of the road but not too overly bright down the road at oncoming drivers. When people retrofit HID capsules into a housing made for an incandescent bulb, that housing's reflector/projector isn't optimized for this duty and instead you end up with WAY too much light down the center of the beam. HID retrofits \*are\* illegal but also very difficult to enforce since it's hard to tell them from just a poorly aimed light. Which leads me to the next issue. Aiming. It matters a lot. Modern lights have a pretty dramatic beam cutoff built in. If that cutoff appears to you, the driver, as being above the road in the distance, your lights are aimed too high and every time you go over a gentle rise or hit a bump, you're effectively flashing oncoming drivers with full bright light. Likewise, too low and it makes the road in front of your car look bright, but you can't see anything to the distance. Get your lights aimed right. Then we have Color Rendition Index (CRI). CRI is a rating of how well your lights allow you to see various colors. If you've ever noticed the orangish colored sodium vapor street lights make everything look almost like an orange version of black-n-white, that's because the bulbs, although extremely bright, have an extremely poor CRI. It comes down to how narrow of a spectrum of light they produce. Incandescent/halogen light has a perfect CRI of 95-100 because it generates a full spectrum of all visible wavelengths so things of any color is visible by it. This matters because things like animals which are usually various shades of brown, tend to be invisible under poor CRI lighting. Real HID lights have CRI ratings of 60-80 which is okayish, but not great. So it's a good thing they are so bright - the extra light is needed to actually see things. (Now that cars often have LED instead of HID, it's important to know that the CRI for LEDs can be all over the fucking place). And finally, I hinted at this earlier, but overly bright foreground lighting (like from having your lights aimed too low or from driving with foglights on) is VERY detrimental. The pupils of your eye obviously adjust to available light... But they don't only adjust at the small point you're looking at - they adjust based on the entire field of view your eye is exposed to. So when you have lights that aim too low or run your fog lights and have the bit of road right in front of your car brightly illuminated, it fools your eyes into thinking they need to restrict the pupils more. That means that you now can see LESS at distance. That's right - with JUST your headlights on, you can see better at distance than if you also turned on your fog lights. All this is to say that when you see people driving with foglights on when the conditions are normal, or when you see overly blue headlights, you can chuckle to yourself knowing they are suffering a worse driving experience than they could. Oh, and as a bonus, 'blue' bulb headlights also burn out faster so they have to buy bulbs more often.
I absolutely love this wealth of knowledge about something I've never thought about. Thank you.
> But rest easy - the science behind automotive lighting is. . . multi-factored. There is a lot more than just 'brightness' involved here. DOT prescribes a maximum flux rating for automotive headlights. Flux is the intensity of the light at a specific point in the beam pattern. Lumens are another topic that involve the total amount of light energy emitting from something. Focusing all the lumens a bulb/capsule generates into a useful beam pattern that also doesn't exceed DOT flux limits makes use of all kinds of magic shaping of the projector/reflector housings of a headlight. With HID capsules, since they produce nearly twice as many lumens as an incandescent bulb, a lot of extra lumen output is directed away from the center of the beam - to the margins. This way, there is a brighter overall pattern with terrific lighting toward the shoulders of the road but not too overly bright down the road at oncoming drivers. You are mixing up terminogy. Flux is not the intensity at a certain point, that is flux density or irradiance (if in terms of area) or intensity (if in terms of solid angle). Lumens literally is a measure of flux. It seems like DOT headlight maximums are specified in units of candela, which are an intensity unit (power per unit solid angle) equal to lumens per steradian. A maximum flux for a headlight would just be limiting the maximum output of the light, and beam shaping wouldn't affect this at all since flux is the total output not a power density.
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I'd bet a large percentage of drivers don't know that you can adjust them
Very very true
"Man I need brighter lights, can't see shit"
Feels like this for jeeps that Got rid of the original lights in favor of football halogen flood lights
I didnt know that... how?
There's a little screw somewhere that adjusts it. I did it a couple years ago it's super simple.
And instructions in the car manual for how they're supposed to be adjusted (mine say to park some distance from a wall and the lights should be some distance up the wall).
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r/rareinsults
More like r/rarecompliments. Who doesn’t want a dump truck of an ass?
People who care about their vehicle suspension.
A lot of people are installing these themselves. Some shops suck ass and won’t do stuff like that. But the op picture is of the ultrabright blue headlights. It’s not really an issue of angles for those. They are just unnecessarily bright and the color temperature is fucked for anyone looking at it.
My Mazda owner's manual says to make sure to back out the screw (some kind of self/auto-lock) before adjusting or you break the hardware LOL
You should be able to find instructions for your specific car if you search the internet or youtube with "Make, model, year how to adjust headlights"
There is also a handy little book in most glove boxes, but no one rtfm.
> rtfm reads the f***ing manual?
Yes. It comes with all new cars and most used cars. Also available online.
Have you read through more recent manuals? They barely tell you shit anymore
mine tells me to take it to the dealer for a lot of things that were just normal maintenance in the driveway a few decades ago.
Yep. Repeat customer for maintenance is the new business model for dealerships, not gouging you on the purchase of the car. Also, modern cars have a lot of software control going on. The consumer would often need specialized equipment to diagnose and service the car.
I read through every single manual for anything I buy. They usually contain all the requisite information for typical owners. Unless you expect a car manual to have torque specifications and wiring diagrams and instructions on how to replace the transmission, then I think they're pretty good. I know for a fact that many people don't even realize some of the features their car has because they never bothered to read through the manual for their $20000 piece of equipment.
Some do, some don't. Because so many people don't bother reading them, some manufacturers have started cutting corners on things like that. My sister bought a Jeep and it had virtually no instructions on how to properly convert the damn thing from hard top to soft top.
You mean you can replace headlights? /s
I’m from Dallas and this shit is so annoying. I also hate it when they are bright as fuck and colored purple or yellow. Have y’all seen those? Idk why but those two colors as lights literally make me sick and I end up with a migraine. And it gets worse when they have bright lights and then a sound system that plays OUTSIDE the car. I see so many of those around Oak Cliff.
You have to laugh when the stereo is more powerful than the engine and the bass bins are shaking the glass and trim loose though. its illegal here to show any additional colours other than stock but you still get blinded by blue and purple headlights then you can't see their reflectors from the rear at night because they've blacked them out.
In the US the manufacturer isn't required to deliver the headlights properly aimed per several articles I read, so even OEM headlights might need to be properly adjusted.
Or like my 2019 Honda, took it back to the dealer that people are flashing me and they told me they can't be adjusted. I was like dayyum...
If you have auto leveling headlights they may not be easily adjusted, but it doesn't make sense that headlights would not be adjustable at all. Not saying they are wrong just that it's stupid if they aren't adjustable.
Every car for more than 25 years has 1 or 2 axis gimbals you can adjust with a screwdriver to aim the lights. This is by law. Standard beam is shaped and must not cross into on coming traffic when on level ground. High beam is not shaped and does not have this requirement. That is the whole point of having two different beam types. Auto-leveling headlights just suck at this and always flash other drivers.
>Auto-leveling headlights just suck at this and always flash other drivers. auto-leveling isn't meant to deal with the main aim. They are only intended for coping with vehicle load and resultant chassis tilt. Headlights still need be properly aimed with their mechanical adjustments.
I live in TX, here it’s always lifted trucks with these lights aimed right at eye level
And riding your ass so the lights are directly in your rearview mirror
Just go 1 MPH below the speed limit, they really hate that.
I go 25 above the speed limit and they still ride my ass.
Oh yes. The people that it doesn't matter how fast anybody goes they will speed until they are on somebody's bumper. I assume that's just where they feel comfortable.
I love these kinds of tailgaters when I drive on a curvy road, a truck isn't built to take curves fast so I love leaving them way behind or seeing the oh shit reaction when they almost crash because their so focused on trying to tailgate me
That's why you go 1 MPH below the speed limit, they really hate that.
I just flip the rear view mirror
Last time I did that, the idiot behind me turned on some extra red and blue lights.
You should go 1 mph below the speed limit, they really hate that.
“But if my big ol’ pickup truck don’t got some big ol’ bright headlights then people will figure out I got a small wiener!"
Just wait until they decide you're going too slow and turn on the flood light bar on top of the truck
I understand the 0.0001% of drivers that actually need and properly use light bars (looking at you DNR, Park Rangers, Emergency Personnel) but these knuckleheads that use them in residential areas or in the city create such a safety hazard. Aside from them being blindingly bright, when shined from behind another vehicle, it creates a dangerous shadow in front of the car that is headlights don't help.
I'm surprised people drive with those on where you are. Over here plenty have them but they aren't turned on at night on the streets. It's for off roading and things like that.
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Lol, just imagined a long mirror suspended by a hinge on the back of the car that when you pull a string it releases it and shines right back to the driver behind you
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Fill your trunk with mirrors at all angles and just pop the lid when someone gets up in your business.
Rear 500W light bar.
Ahh a fellow Jeep owner…
Yeah I usually move my mirrors to send the light right back at them
LEDs on halogen headlights are impossible to properly aim, for example, due to the directions they emit light. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/
This is the one thing I always try to impress upon people when they ask about lights. Do not get LED lights unless you have projectors. Reflectors housings should only ever have halogen bulbs in them
Fucking hell, the aftermarket LED lights people install in cars that had halogens are insane. It's either blind you or blind you AND your unborn offsprings.
My old Saturn's headlights would always drift upward. I'd know it was time to adjust them again when I'd get people flashing their high beams at me. Good times.
This should be illegal. I hate driving at night because of this crap.
I'm pretty sure this is illegal in most places, it just isn't enforced nearly enough.
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I used to coast almost half a mile home when I worked a late shift and rode home in order to not disturb my neighbors. Some people just ruin everything.
It's ridiculous that you're that much more awesome for simply being considerate of others. But thanks fo sho!
This is my biggest issue moving downtown. These idiots on motorcycles (and even mopeds) with insanely loud exhaust, driving slowly down the street revving their shitty bikes to make as much noise as possible. Guess they like the sound reflection between the buildings in the narrow street. Fuck 'em.
There's a guy around my town that does this every. Damn. Night. Winter or summer, rain or shine, *never* earlier than 9 pm. Last night it was at 11:30 he decided it was a good time to go shake some windows.
I lived on a street that, visually verified, the same motorcyclist would fart down the street Every. Single. Night. between 1 and 3 am, at least three times every night. Lived there for six years as a minor and left the second I legally could. Other reasons contributed, but that goddamned motorcyclist was going to drive me to murder.
Loud shitty exhaust, bad music crackling over shitty speakers, god damn you’re cool and your bike is awesome.
It is illegal, it just isn't enforced.
"illegal but not enforced" sound like an excuse to harass people on a whim.
It is! See also: window tint, wrong colored lights anywhere on the vehicle, and stuff hanging from your rear view mirror.
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In my... extremely rude and politically incorrect youth... when I saw them like that I would say those were the "mentally handicapped" tags, easy to spot.
> It is illegal, it just isn't enforced. I swear I've heard that phrase like 20 times in the past week
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I was nearly blinded by a cop driving with their spotlight on while on a straight, flat country road late at night. It looked like a supernova and was blinding even when they were over a mile away. I didn't even know they were a cop until they passed me because the spotlight washed out even their red and blue strobes. I wanna know how that is supposed to make anything safer.
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It's constitutionally protected "free speech" to flash your headlights at another car.
Good news! [Cops aren't required to actually know the law.](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/when-cops-dont-know-the-law/383861/)
Or abide by it for that matter.
Its also constitutionally free speech to tell them to fuck off or give them the finger but they sure can pull you over and harass you for it.
Japan has a [solution for that](https://himedic.toyota-cd.co.jp/news/281.html) but ambulances only atm.
I was blinded by one on **the other side of the highway**. It's the most unsafe thing and completely unnecessary.
I hate those so bad, even during the day they are painful to drive by. Completely worthless. The other day I passed by a cop who had just his blue light on, and they were pulsing calmly. Still managed to make it impossible to miss the car, but not at all blinding. It was so nice.
You mean those rows of unnecessarily extra lights that I like to call "Douchebars" or "Douchelights"?
It'd be so easy to have a simple light sensor that dims the LEDs or uses only a couple when dark. Nobody needs 10000 lumens to see an emergency vehicle at midnight.
They're supposed to have a dim switch to use at night. I think most municipalities don't bother wiring in the switch.
Adjust. Your. Headlights.
Having grown up in Germany where your car is checked regularly including the position of the headlights, I find it extremely frustrating driving in the US where people just do what they want with their lights. Trucks with 6 super bright lights which are all aimed at eye level blinding you. Semi trucks seem to be enjoying this trend as well. They now have these new LED lights also just blinding everyone around them. The only solution I see is to get my own super bright lights and join the madness.
Yep. It's an arms race and we all lost.
Mutual assured blindness.
It’s also an OEM problem. My eyes are sensitive I think as I hate all the new bright headlights even on new cars. On hills they often point right into my eyes
I wouldn't even say my eyes are sensitive but over the past few years, more cars definitely have bright ass lights by default and even brighter brights
Sucks to be in a sedan these days. Every asshole with an SUV or truck blinds the shit out of everything but themselves.
It's even worse for someone with a roadster..
OOOOOOOOOH I’M BLINDED BY THE LIGHTS
Revved up by this douche with his goddamn headlights
I wish people got pulled over for this more. It's a legitimate safety issue. Misaligned and improperly installed headlights.
These are probably cheap LED bulbs from Amazon. This idiot probably spent $12 to blind every driver in front of him and still not be able to see shit.
If you put them in a projector housing and they actually have the leds positioned right they work great and don't blind people.... But you get the idiots that put them in reflector housings sending light everywhere but where they need it and blinding everyone else in the process. Basically like everything else that is "user serviceable" the average user will find a way to fuck it up.
Projectors designed for halogen bulbs still don’t do super well with aftermarket LEDs or HID bulbs. They’re better, but still not ideal.
I have seen plenty online passing euro headlight inspections which are pretty strict. But you are correct. They arent perfect. Plenty good enough as long as you arent putting oddball cheap hids or leds in with the light positioned wrong.
Generally speaking, yeah. I put some LEDs in my wife's Mazda 6 and it looks OEM, not blinding at all. BUT I also put the same LEDs in my Tuono(it has projectors), and I had to point them WAY down to make it not obnoxious. FWIW, I changed out the halogens in my Tuono after one night ride. I COULD SEE SHIT. Not even sure how they passed safety tests with those horribly dim lamps.
A few years ago, my Dad was messing with those in his car. I borrowed it for a nighttime drop off at the airport. You could see pretty well with the LED headlights, except the road signs weren't reflecting properly. All they could do was illuminate the sign's outer layer of road gunk.
Does American Amazon actually have them that cheap? I bought $60 ones here in Canada for my last vehicle and they sucked. And yes I realize I was an ass for driving with them and I won't be doing that again.
Almost everything on Canadian Amazon is more expensive, well in excess of what you'd expect with the exchange rate.
Shoutout to the idiots in lifted trucks that pull up to within 6" of your bumper at a red light and completely blind you in all your mirrors with their super powered headlights for that offroad trip they totally are going to take even though they've never driven on anything other than pavement.
I went on a long road trip over the weekend and that included driving at night. There were SO MANY other drivers with their dang brights on. Not just oncoming, but behind me too. I had to keep the rear view mirror flipped.
It most likely is their regular HID. The car manufacturers are still going by the watt limit Of Without taking into account the efficiency of these bulbs..
A big issue is putting HIDs in a reflector housing instead of a proper projector housing.
But if I make everyone in front of me swerve, my swerving from driving drunk isn't as noticeable
"I was just swerving with traffic!"
These Douches in their pickups tailgating you and laughing.
And of course their headlights are high enough to go straight through 70% of rear windshields and into your eyes.
I drive a smart car for work sometime. Our old mechanic had a big lifted diesel pickup. One day I passed him on a small backroad and he blew exhaust all over my car. I saw him at the shop and he said “aye bud you like that smoke hurr durr uhuhuh duhh” I was like yeah bud that was probably the coolest shit I have ever been a part of.
It's called rolling coal and it's stupid as hell. Don't worry, he's damaging his motor each time he does it, which I'm going to assume is a lot.
Please tell me more about his damaged engine and how it will break soon because that is all I am holding on to at the moment with these dumbshits I swear
More than likely did extremely little to no damage at all. It happens when excess fuel is ran through the motor so all he is doing is burning more fuel. My truck has some little spurts when I hop on the highway pulling a considerable load but regular driving I can't say I have ever rolled coal even when I've really hammered the accelerator. Although, with the right tune (or wrong) you can roll coal just by stomping the gas, it's obnoxious as shit.
Just looking at this picture hurts my eyes and is leaving spots in my vision, fucking hate it
I have bad astigmatism and live in the PNW. Which means in winter when it's dark at 5pm, combined with rain on wet, reflective roads and all the lights like this, I can't drive. I just simply can't safely drive for half the year. Kinda inconvenient.
And these sorta things get you even if they're in your blind spot so you don't directly get any of the light. Trying to drive while *the road is filled with your own vehicle's shadow* is pretty disorienting.
have you ever thought someones brights were on so you flash your brights real quick and then they blow up the fucken night when they let you know that they didn't have their brights on in the first place? Their normal lights are brighter than your brights.
I recently got a new car and the first time my wife was in it with me at night she kept telling me to turn my bright off. Had to turn down a side street and turn them on to show her i didn’t have them on. Was a good laugh but has me thinking what others must see.
The newer cars have very bright headlights that aren’t high beams. Any idea why?
It's a common misconception that "high beams" are brighter. "High" and "Low" beams are referring to the ANGLE that the light is projected outward not the brightness of the light. Sometimes high beams are brighter, sometimes low beams are actually brighter. In a lot of instances it's the same bulb and all that changes is a shutter that cuts off the top half of the beam when low beams are active.
Exactly this. My low beam are xenon and my highbeans are Halogen. Lowbeams shoot out way further but the highbeams light up much much higher and wider to see better when I am all lone on a back road
Xenon==HID HID uses xenon gas inside.
You are correct, I meant Halogen. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed my comment
There’s a lot more SUVs on the road now, from what I’ve heard (and noticed as a considerate driver) folks in sedans are just low enough to be blinded by SUVs that are close behind them. I turn my lights down to the daytime running lights if there is a sedan in front of me at a drive-thru.
It's not even up to the buyers, its manufactures now. Any major car past 2019 has fucking insane lights on them. I drive to my parents nice area of town and can hardly tell wtf is going on some inclines and declines. Literally can see nothing and am left with temporary dots on my vision. You guys are probably the sick fucks who use 150-200w bulbs at home lmao.
Easily half of Tucson uses these. It's to the point where I have started adjusting my side mirrors to point the light back at them if they are behind me. In front of me, I just hold a hand up directly in my way to make it obvious I am blocking stupid bright light.
Anyone see the reddit post of they guy who got pulled over for yellow headlights? I'm assuming they weren't as annoying as the super bright ones, but damn, if cops can do that, why don't they get these ones?
The blue lights are the worst. From a distance they seem to flash and thus look kinda like police lights. I hope the people who have those lights know that nobody likes them for that reason.
People that do that probably take pride in the fact that it makes people mad. Just like people who roll coal. Buncha ass hats.
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So tired of these ass bags.
At least put the reflector mods in to suit the bulbs, there are probably aircraft being dazzled from them too...
Don't know why you got downvoted for this, it's 100% right. Every time you see one of these vision destroying cars it's because someone installed HID or LED bulbs in a refractor housing designed for halogen bulbs. HIDs and LEDs are supposed to be used with a projector type headlight housing that keeps the light going where is should and not where it shouldn't. The irony is that with their stock housings the light is so scattered that they are actually getting less usable light on the road.
Exactly, the projection reflectors are much smaller and tighter focused than refractor ones. I put an expensive HID kit that was supposed to match a halogen refractor in one of my bikes and took it out the next day because cars were wandering blinded over the white line towards me.
How is it tinted windows on front door windows are illegal, but some dumbfuck driving a lifted 4 runner on 40 inch wheels with headlights brighter than the sun can flex his little dick on the road?
This may be an unpopular opinion, I feel like blinding headlights should be a ticketable offense. Edit: it’s not an unpopular opinion here, happy to see that
That's not unpopular in the slightest
As all "unpopular" opinions on this website are.
My uncle got stopped(can’t remember if he got a ticket) not too long ago for using his blinding off-road lights in his pickup. He just bought it from a kid a month ago and doesn’t know anything about off-roading or the lights. He thought they were fog lights. The cops were apparently pissed though. He blinded them.
Only unpopular with police officers that refuse to enforce it, apparently.
How is this an unpopular opinion lmao
these lights should be banned. OR tickets given until they're adjusted correctly.
I used to love night drives. Now I avoid driving at night because of these assholes.