Its been a while since I logged on last, sorry just busy with work and other stuff.
In my country at least i think there is a problem with cars at night. Anytime i go for a drive and meet other cars, I cannot see at all. Especially recently there seems to be more new cars fitted with high powered leds.
I dont know if its just me or can any of you relate to that feeling when you are driving. I find if someone has high intensity led or hid headlights behind me it hurts my eyes in the mirror.
Came across a website on reddit it seems to have many people of the same opinion its called r/f**ckyourheadlights.
Reason Im asking here is because LEDs and optics are a topic of interest here. Ive always wondered which is superior in cars projector or reflector. The reflector seems to work like a standard flashlight reflector but the projector seems to use a glass lens to focus the light, maybe an aspherical lens.
I mostly have trouble with the LED headlights on Jeep Wranglerās and pickup trucks.
Thereās been a bunch of online news articles about headlights being to bright but with everything else going on, they donāt seem to catch the eye of law makers.
I doubt LED headlamps are going anywhere. Theyāve been offered by manufacturers for 20 years now, and thereās 10ās of millions of them on the road. It would be impossible to ban them.
The main issue with the OEM lights is too many arenāt aligned properly. Even worse are the illegal aftermarket oneās people put in halogen housings.
It also doesnāt help matters the DOT only relatively recently allowed the advanced adaptive lighting, and many manufacturers still havenāt even implemented it.
One problem is that better focussing and light-steering makes for a way more precise beam.
Of course, that only applies if the emitter remains the same exact geometry (glowing cylinder for the hotwire bulb, point source for HID, etc.) as the OEM emitter.
Aiming said lights is critical.
Whatās funny is if you watch dashcam videos. Retards who flash their brights at offending cars do a great job of lighting up those carsā taillights and rear bumpers. The sharp cutoff pretty much guarantees that almost zero light will hit those carsā mirrors, either side- or windshield-mounted.
So with a sharp cutoff and precise light-steering, the headlights fill the beam to maximum intensity. Great for lighting up the road in front of you, but if someone is in the roadway at night, youāll only see the guyās sneakers right before you hit him.
Todayās lights are bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, black. Nothing above the top cutoff.
My 90W H4s in my old car laid down a nice even blanket of light, but would also light up stopsigns and even overhead highway signs. Only faint spill, but plenty on retroreflective signs. And Iād see that guy in plenty of time to not hit him.
And I never got flashed that they were too bright.
So, thatās why I replaced pretty much all external lighting with LEDs except the headlights. Iāll just keep the power-hungry hotwire bulbs. Also melts snow off the lights when driving in a snowstorm.
Yes some do look brighter, especially when they are not directly in front or behind you. a car follows me but in a different lane, it blinds, as soon as it merges in my lane behind me it is no longer blinding, nor it bothers. However I noticed it happens with headlights that use clamshell reflectors, those with lenses do not do that.
I do not expect anything to change any time soon, even if they start looking into it, it will take years or decades, they only act fast when they have screw over the population and raise taxes.
However, it is not all lost, I use yellow night driving glasses, it makes day and night difference, not only it makes thing appear brighter, but it makes even brightest headlights much more tolerable, it removes blue spectrum, and makes it a lot easier to look at. They come with non rx lenses, or you can get those with rx lenses. the brand does not really matter, I have several pairs from 20 to 200 bucks, they all work pretty much the same.
Manufacturers try to be as bright as they can while staying within regulations.
With LEDs, they can produce an abundance of lumens and engineer the light pattern to exactly fit the allowed envelope.
When every lumen was precious, as with halogen, manufacturers made sure the light only went where it was needed and used efficient reflectors. Now, the allowable limit has effectively become the design target.
I hate them actually. Theyāre even worse than HIDs when those came on the scene in the late 90s. Now theyāre using LEP in headlamps that are even worse. Issue is people put lift kits or bigger tires on their cars/suvs that effectively disable the auto leveling function that keeps people who drive normal height cars from getting blinded. Or the autolevel function fails or non-oem housings or lamps are installed after a crash, etc that donāt work and cause even more glare from incorrectly aimed or focused housings. Plus the CCT is bad for your eyes (night vision) anyway. 6000k and 7500k are terrible for glare and refraction in fog/mist. 4500K or 4000K is much better, but we donāt see those anymore since HID went away.
What i dont understand is why dont people, especially those who do want ultra bright led to just take couple minutes, mark out the beam pattern on a wall in a car park somewhere and set the adjustment. Its easy to do, and if the headlights are that badly misaligned why not just turn down the levelling dial to keep it out of someones eyes?
Yes unfortunately thats the problem with projector style housings with the lens. Having zero spill is a bad idea its even hard to adjust from seeing a bright area to looking into what appears as pitch dark. I think some modren cars use both projector low beam reflector high beam. Pedestrians have been a real issue for me personally at least they wear dark jackets and they step out onto the road and expect you to react. Sometimes their distracted with mobile phones, mp3 players, radios etc and cant hear the car coming
Sorry but that is a myth, they are perfectly aligned from the factory, IDK who came up with this myth, but it has nothing to do with reality.
Lights are aligned at the factory, line assist cameras aligned from the factory, everything that needs alignment is done before a car leaves the factory, there is 0 factual evidence to support this myth.
A lot of people believe sugar will dissolve in gas and kill the engine, but it does not make it true
I know theyāre supposed to be, but my 2020 Forte GT, bought brand new off the lot) was absolutely not aligned properly. First night I drove it I noticed the low beams were higher than the high beams of my 04 Acura TL.
Every new car me or my family got since 2005 had properly aligned lights, just like they had properly aligned wheels, and cameras, and radars, about a dozen of cars all together, every 3 years, What happen to you is exception, your car was probably bumped or dropped too hard from a transporter at the dealer lot, so it got misaligned, that I can believe , have seen that happen few times, but āevery car comes misalignedā is a myth, I have an idea who spread this lie, good thing he no longer posts neither here nor cpf.
Iād like to see new vehicle headlight LEDs be warmer.
If the lens and reflector are designed correctly, thereās no reason for OEM LED headlights to be blinding if aimed preperly.
In the motorcycle community and, maybe also in cars, there are those who replace the OEM halogen H4 bulbs that are essentially point source emitters with fleaBay / amazon-ian H4 LED āreplacementsā ( TenSeventeenElevenHundred-gazillion brilliant Chinese lumens guaranteed !!! ) that can never be point source, resulting is no real beam āpatternā, one that makes for poor lighting down the road while blinding oncoming drivers.
And I would assume this is āillegalā in most parts of the Western world? It sure is in Germany. But in Germany everything is illegal, with some very specific exceptions
Iām not sure about the USA, but I remember they still had some sealed-beam headlights until the mid-80s, and imported cars needed to be retrofitted with exactly those lamps.
So I canāt imagine they donāt have specific regulations now governing which bulbs can be used and how the headlight beam pattern must be calibrated.
I absolutely agree that my car is the exception not the rule, but mistakes on new cars are more common than one might think. My sister is the comptroller for a group of 7 dealerships, and she gets to resolve those mistakes. She just told me about a Lincoln Navigator Black Label they got last week with all black interior, except for the bright white driverās interior door panel. If the plant can make a mistake like that they can absolutely misalign a headlight.
