I agree.
I think the lights on my newer Honda are probably about 6500K. On the plus side, the reds and browns are not completely washed out…perhaps they’re 80 CRI? I don’t know, as I don’t have a way to verify.
I can force myself to ignore the cool white when it’s just me, and I have the low beams on (the high beams are harsh enough that even the reflection of road signs is obnoxious), but whenever I crest a small rise when there is oncoming traffic in the other lane, I’m painfully aware of how the upper cutoff of my beams is high enough to be in the oncoming driver’s eyes.
I would like to try swapping better emitters into mine, but I don’t even know what LED’s are in them to know if I could find something compatible. One of the downsides of Honda is their mentality of designing for reliability seems to be approached with an attitude that this excuses them from designing for maintainability. I suspect I could spend the better part of a weekend just removing a headlight assembly, disassembling it to ID the emitters, and re-installing it in order to continue using the car while I order emitters.
So my next thought was to buy spare headlights to prepare ahead of time. But the list price for each headlight is over $1000!
FYI, the 7 year development cycle is for a complete redesign of a new generation. Manufacturers can change single parts much more quickly. I worked a few years in engineering for an industrial vehicle manufacturing, developing and conducting tests for individual components. I would say mid-generation replacement component qualification typically ranged from 6-18 months, depending on complexity, for design engineering, prototype fabrication, prototype testing (my part), sourcing contract, and release to manufacturing. If replacing a system comprising multiple components, it could be longer, but that shouldn’t be necessary here.
The catch is they have to want to change a part. If they don’t understand why anyone would want neutral or warm white and high CRI, they aren’t going to make the change.
I know my state specifies on-road lighting requirements in state law. It is not illegal to install auxiliary light bars, but it is definitely illegal in my state to use them on the road.
There’s a job where you’re surrounded by lots of brown (dirt, logs, slash), and probably a decent amount of yellow and red when the foliage is changing color. High CRI actually would help.