Headlamps bulbs....

You might find that wearing 'night driving' glasses helps, they are a sort of amber colour, which improves contrast, just as sodium street lights do.

You'll need to check the fitting before purchase. The only ones I have seen are H1, H4 or H7.

I fitted brighter bulbs, but found they are not much help. On full beam, the old lights were perfectly adequate. But, that's only usable when the road ahead is clear. On dipped beam, the new brighter bulbs increased the reflection back off the road surface, so I did not find there was any real improvement in more distant vision.

The right approach is to polarise the light from all the headlights diagonally, and for drivers to wear diagonally polarised glasses. But, that requires changes to all existing vehicles.

On a slightly another note, I saw a tv piece where the police randomly stopped an elderly driver, then picked on a parked car which policeman 'estimated' was 20m away without doing measurement, asked the elderly driver to read the numberplate on that parked car. As the driver failed, policeman took off his driving licence. Seems to me so many problems with that exercise.

It's made far far worse by modern cars having more powerful headlights. And often rather poor beam control.

I've just fitted an HID kit to mine. From hids4u. Subjectively about 4 times the light of the original halogens. About 90 quid Sod MOT etc regulations - they don't seem to apply to new cars.

My car has those projector dips - the sort with the bulls eye lens. The beam pattern with the HIDs is the same as with tungsten - a very sharp cutoff. Other types of headlight might scatter more.

Dave Plowman (News) submitted this idea :

May be £90 wasted then. Remember that "headlamp" refers to the physical housing unit and "headlight" refers to the bulb or light source.

Section 4.1.4 Defect C states that "Light source and lamp not compatible" and it's a "Major" defect. This means that a unit made for and meant to contain halogen bulbs must have halogen bulbs - nothing else will do.

What problems specifically? I ask as it appears to me a fair summary of the lawful known as "Cassie's Law" - s.96 RTA 1988 but since 2013 with means for the police to report failure to pass a number plate test and DVLA to revoke almost immediately the licence.

I was under the impression that proper hid lamps had to have a bull's eye lens.

All of my headlamps do not have this lens and have halogen bulbs in them.

I was under the impression that a hid bulb in a halogen headlamp unit was a big no no as it's a mot fail.

Thus, if I want hid bulbs, I have to change the headlamp units as well?

The car in question is a golf Mk7 2017 match diesel estate.

The kits on hids4u app at to just be the bulbs only.

Also how do I tell the ECU that I have switched from halogen headlamps to hid headlamps without it throwing up an error message on the dash?

Wow, I never knew such a thing existed!

Presumably I can get these at my local opticians with my prescription lenses in them?

S.

+1

Especially when there is hump in the road so you get the full blast of the dipped beam before the cars attitude ceases to be nose-up.

This is enough to make an older drivers pupils slow to react, leaving him/her 'blinded' for a second or two.

As I said, a totally stupid law made by civil servants with not the slightest idea of technolgy. Aided and abetted by pressure groups out to sell new cars. It's patently obvious on the road that the amount of dazzle from new cars varies enormously. Unless lots of them have their beams miss aligned.

I dunno - but the type of optics which use that bulls eye are far more tolerant of the lamp type than plain reflector ones. The beam pattern as viewed on a wall on mine is near identical to the halogen one. Just a lot brighter.

It's a blanket law written by idiots.

Not so - they include the ballast and devices to fool the canbus and bulb failure unit into thinking it is still halogen.

Basically, a decent kit makes the new look like the old to the car system. Something replacement LEDs seem to lack.

Dave Plowman (News) presented the following explanation :

None of which matters to the MOT tester who will have to fail your car because of a mismatch between bulb and housing.

Wasn't it actually quite sensibly aimed at the once fashionable "boy racer" kits that just offered more power without worrying too much about the pattern, and where the DIY alignment might well be amateurish. Also, sticking more power into plastic units is a recipe for distortion over time, and loss of pattern.

Dave Plowman (News) presented the following explanation :

Its a law intended to prevent unsuitable lamps being installed in unsuitable headlamp units, which are likely to cause excessive dazzle to oncoming vehicles. I think they not only be designed for HID, but also fitted with self levelling systems and headlight washers - at least my OEM system has these as standard for HID.

I'll just mention that I'm the same, and getting worse.

I'm having cataract surgery in a couple of weeks to fix the problem.

The headlights on our Outlander supposedly have a beam pattern which is compatible with both driving on the left and right, so you don't need convertors when driving in Europe.

I've not had the opportunity to check this, observing just what a beam pattern looks like requires a really dark road, not that common in this area.

+2

'Designed' that way or otherwise, 'human drivers' are only able to comfortably tolerate a specific range of limits, be it light brightness, sound levels, G-forces or temperature etc.

If you got a face full of 60W (or whatever it was) halogen main it wasn't nice but it wasn't painful. Just be standing waiting to get onto a roundabout and you *will* be swept with even dipped beam HID (/other silly 'white' lights sources) and they are generally very much brighter than their older counterparts, especially if you are in a standard saloon car and they are in the much higher tanks.

Many dipped beam lights and now as 'bright' as a halogen main and if ever out on my own and blinded by such, I'm not sure if I'd want to swerve into a brick pillar over swerving into the blinding lights and at least saving everyone else the pain and suffering. ;-(

In the old days we seemed to respect other people ...

Cheers, T i m

Simple answer, buy a base model Mokka. You can stare straight into the headlights and admire the faint yellow glow. No chance of dazzling anyone.

Tim

+1, also these days you can actually be seriously dazzled by bicycle lights. Made the mistake the other day of looking a bit too closely at one while trying to decide whether it was a bicycle or motorbike, in order to judge its speed so as to match mine for the road narrowing caused by a parked car, only to realise a second or two later that I'd wrecked my dark adaptation.