The new breed of headlights....
Discussion
Sorry if this has been posted before but what is it with the new cars with the new type of headlights which change colour over the bumps and then burn holes in your eyes.
I understand they are supposed to give the driver a better night vision but it seems at the expense of all on coming traffic.
I am constantly being dazzled and whereas can cope with the old yellow type light headlamps the new ones are actually painful, even when looking to the left.
When someone forgets to dip, vision is lost for seconds afterwards which isn't the best thing to occur on twisty country roads.
Are these lights really a safety aid as advertised by the car manufacturers??
I understand they are supposed to give the driver a better night vision but it seems at the expense of all on coming traffic.
I am constantly being dazzled and whereas can cope with the old yellow type light headlamps the new ones are actually painful, even when looking to the left.
When someone forgets to dip, vision is lost for seconds afterwards which isn't the best thing to occur on twisty country roads.
Are these lights really a safety aid as advertised by the car manufacturers??
I had a new fangled BMW behind me last night while driving home in town. Now my headlights are rubbish to say the least but do the job. My problem was that the lights of the bmw were so bright, they were causing a shadow in front of my car! Is there an upper legal limit on headlight brightness? (for want of a more technical term!)
The type of lights which change colour are ordinary projector lenses (like on the Puma and S2 Elise) - the bullseye lens refracts the light around its periphery and you get a spectrum of colours at the edge of the beam. I find that immensely irritating too, even when driving my Elise.
Xenons I find perfectly OK though - they just produce a whiter light, and because the law says they have to have a self-adjustment mechanism, I've never been blinded by them. Unlike normal halogen lights, which people never seem to keep properly adjusted.
Xenons I find perfectly OK though - they just produce a whiter light, and because the law says they have to have a self-adjustment mechanism, I've never been blinded by them. Unlike normal halogen lights, which people never seem to keep properly adjusted.
mcecm said:
I had a new fangled BMW behind me last night while driving home in town. Now my headlights are rubbish to say the least but do the job. My problem was that the lights of the bmw were so bright, they were causing a shadow in front of my car!
I'm not entirely sure I understand your "causing a shadow" comment here. Regardless of whether the BMW was behind you or not, your own headlights would illuminate the road surface just the same. The only thing that changes with the BMW behind you is that its headlights are providing *additional* illumination in front of you, and the "shadow" you see being cast by your car isn't hiding any part of the road you would otherwise have been able to see if you were relying solely on your own headlights.
Disclosure time: I drive a xenon-equipped car, and I've never noticed any significant illumination of the road in front of a car I'm following, nor have I noticed this when I'm being followed by such a vehicle. I do however notice this sort of thing happening when I'm being followed by any sort of vehicle with badly adjusted lights or where the driver thinks using mainbeam at all times will make them look attractive to the opposite sex... in other words, any problems I have with headlights on other vehicles is entirely down to poor maintenance or misuse, not the actual light technology itself.
I have noticed that xenons are more eye-catching, particularly the most recent pure-white breed as opposed to the earlier blue-white generation, and especially compared to the washed-out yellowy light being emitted by some aged halogen lights. Which, I suppose, can be both a good and a bad thing - it's potentially distracting, but it also makes the xenon-equipped vehicle far harder to miss as it approaches. But I wouldn't say they're dazzling as such, certainly not in the same way as being hit by a face-full of mainbeam.
Once you drive a car with xenons, you will never want to drive one without. I don't find myself getting dazzled by other cars' xenons and I put down the attitude of the xenon haters to either jealousy or kneejerk idiotic brand hatred (especially BMW) or both. Eventually, all cars will have them, even TVRs.
>> Edited by Zod on Wednesday 27th October 14:13
>> Edited by Zod on Wednesday 27th October 14:13
Zod said:
Once you drive a car with xenons, you will never want to drive one without. I don't find myself getting dazzled by other cars' xenons and I put down the attitude of the xenon haters to either jealousy or kneejerk idiotic brand hatred (especially BMW) or both.
You "think" what you like. Xenons are dazzling and change colours. End of debate. And I don't give a toss what kind of car they're fitted to.
DennisTheMenace said:
Hid bulbs are only 35w , also they are self adjusting but down a bumpy road the motors struggle to keep the lights level .
Todays luxury motor is tomorrows cheap as chips banger.
Give it 5-10 years wher all the self adjusters are broken and the owners cant afford the zillion quid to replace them and we`ll all be driving around in sunglasses at night.
Steve
zumbruk said:
Once you drive a car with xenons, you will never want to drive one without. I don't find myself getting dazzled by other cars' xenons and I put down the attitude of the xenon haters to either jealousy or kneejerk idiotic brand hatred (especially BMW) or both.
You "think" what you like. Xenons are dazzling and change colours. End of debate. And I don't give a toss what kind of car they're fitted to.
I also don't like the way they appear blue so you have to do a double take to make sure that its not an emergency vehicle
zumbruk said:
Zod said:
Once you drive a car with xenons, you will never want to drive one without. I don't find myself getting dazzled by other cars' xenons and I put down the attitude of the xenon haters to either jealousy or kneejerk idiotic brand hatred (especially BMW) or both.
You "think" what you like. Xenons are dazzling and change colours. End of debate. And I don't give a toss what kind of car they're fitted to.
Luddite. "End of debate" is not argument.
I agree with towman's point though and think that they must make working levelling mechanisms a part of the MOT.
>> Edited by Zod on Wednesday 27th October 14:55
Perhaps, as has been reported, if the one third of drivers with poor eye sight got their eyes tested perceived dazzlement may decrease?
Having both a car with xenons (astra - before one asks) and other one with ellipsoidal lights - xenons are fantastic and I don't have a problem with on coming xenon lights! Part of the problem is the muppets who drive along with badly adjusted lights which cause dazzle. Also, if the fricking highways agency/councils were allowed to spend more money on road maintenance the road road surfaces would not be as bumpy - give self levelling lights the chance to keep up!
Having both a car with xenons (astra - before one asks) and other one with ellipsoidal lights - xenons are fantastic and I don't have a problem with on coming xenon lights! Part of the problem is the muppets who drive along with badly adjusted lights which cause dazzle. Also, if the fricking highways agency/councils were allowed to spend more money on road maintenance the road road surfaces would not be as bumpy - give self levelling lights the chance to keep up!
V6GTO said:
Is there an upper legal limit on headlight brightness? (for want of a more technical term!)
I think it is 60 watts. Martin.
If that's output power, it's at big theatrical spotlight levels... if it's input power, it's meaningless without knowing the efficiency of the bulb.
It's silly to say "xenons must be OK because they're only 35W" - they are more efficient than halogen bulbs, so they can still put out a lot more light.
Xenons do dazzle people, and it's pointless to deny it because there are millions of people out there to disprove by counterexample. Nor is it possible for people to counteract the dazzle by "getting their eyes tested". Spectacles can only correct focussing errors, they can't do anything about an intense concentrated light source in an otherwise dark field of view exceeding the eye's contrast range and forcing it to stop down.
There is also a problem of dazzle from muppets with maladjusted headlights fitted with ordinary bulbs with blue stuff on because they think it looks cool, but that doesn't invalidate the point that xenons cause dazzle.
towman said:
Give it 5-10 years wher all the self adjusters are broken and the owners cant afford the zillion quid to replace them and we`ll all be driving around in sunglasses at night.
Some of us are already having to do this (or make use of our rear window blinds...) because of all the poorly adjusted halogen lights out there - what does it matter if it'd cost a few hundred quid to fix a xenon self-levelling system if drivers are already too stingy (or simply don't give a flying whatsit about other road users) to pay out the spare change required to realign their halogens?
cliffe_mafia said:
I also don't like the way they appear blue so you have to do a double take to make sure that its not an emergency vehicle
There's a world of difference between the pale blue tint of some xenons and the deep blue used by the emergency services. Then again, it wasn't so very long ago that the most likely place for you to see a pair of xenons was on the front of a motorway patrol car, so perhaps there's still an association in some drivers minds between xenons and police cars
zod said:
I agree with towman's point though and think that they must make working levelling mechanisms a part of the MOT.
It isn't already
The direct.gov.uk site indicates that the MOT checks include "Lights - condition, operation, security and correct colour. The headlamps will also be checked to see if the aim is correct". If they don't test the self-levelling system, then how can they say the condition, operation and aim is OK? As I pointed out earlier, I drive a xenon-equipped car, which should indicate where I sit on the "best thing since sliced bread/a total menace to road safety" debate regarding these lights. However, I wasn't forced into getting xenons, I deliberately chose to buy a car with xenons as a result of seeing other cars fitted with them - and how well they illuminated the road compared to halogens - whilst I was still driving a non-xenon-fitted car. I can see how and why some people dislike them, and I wouldn't be driving a xenon-equipped car if I thought I was being a menace to other drivers, but I genuinely think their benefits outweigh their drawbacks and I think the sooner we see the last of the washed-out, barely visible in anything except pitch blackness, halogens removed from the roads, the better.
Zod said:
Once you drive a car with xenons, you will never want to drive one without. I don't find myself getting dazzled by other cars' xenons and I put down the attitude of the xenon haters to either jealousy or kneejerk idiotic brand hatred (especially BMW) or both. Eventually, all cars will have them, even TVRs.
>> Edited by Zod on Wednesday 27th October 14:13
We have an Audi TT and the Xenon lights are indeed very good, but I would never pay for them over std lights. They are distracting and as someone has said, they self adjust (don't all Xenons have to have self adjusters?) but don't always keep up with the undulatons in the road - hence being extra dazzly sometimes. I dislike Xenons a lot and see them as another one of the things making drivers feel they're invincible like airbags and ABS. I do see the point of airbags and ABS as they save lives. Xenons just allow you too see the same bit of road as a good std headlight, but more brightly.
Also I worry about blinding an oncoming driver and causing them to crash.
zumbruk said:You think Xenons are dazzling - I'll accept that. However, Xenons do not change colour - that's ordinary halogen projectors (and I currently own an Audi S6 with Xenons and an S2 Elise with projectors so I see the difference whenever I drive at night). They're completely different things.
Xenons are dazzling and change colours.
And, in my (Puma and Elise) experience, projectors might cast a nicely-shaped beam but they're bloody useless for night driving.
Don't care if some people are blinded by Xenons (or what they think are Xenons
), they're legal and they function well so I'm sticking with them.Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff