Bright Headlights

[KARNUT]

I don’t drive at night anymore, don’t need to. I just did to gas the wife’s car. I realize you may get more sensitive to light as you age. It seems that most cars are running high beams, but there’re not. We went for ever with those round headlights with high beams and low beams. We just slowed down at night. Is it me or is this a trend?

[richard wysong]

With the projector type headlights if a car approaches on a slight incline the lights shine right in our eyes, not so much with the regular halogens. I was reading in the AAA newsletter that the automakers are aware of the problem and that in Europe they have a self leveling system to fix the problem but here in the USA the regulators will not approve the system for use in this country. 

[sk]

The other problem is that there are literally tens-of-thousands of aftermarket LED bulbs available online and people are putting them in their headlights thinking they are brighter.  Most are actually "whiter", which makes them look brighter, but the lumens are actually less.  But the main problem is that the halogen reflector housings were never designed to handle these bulbs and they don't focus the light correctly -- it just scatters.  That makes them blind oncoming traffic, even if the headlights are aimed correctly.

 

The practice of putting those bulbs in headlights that were not OEM designed for them is ILLEGAL according to DOT, but police honestly have bigger things to deal with than stopping everyone who threw aftermarket bulbs into their headlight housings ....