power3dfx

leveling is the most important thing when it comes to lights. not just HID, but even the crapy halogen bulbs. i have been blinded by a friends car several times because the lights werent adjusted, and he had regular halogens. the point is, yes hid can be more blinding then halogen, and yes action should be taken against them. the action is AUTO-LEVELING should be on any light system, especially hid.

power3dfx

i cant stress how important leveling is. it affects the oncoming traffic as well as your own driving sight.
by the way, is the gs the only model with auto leveling, (im sure its not but wanna make sure)

lexlikenother

What they really need to crackdown on are the people (mostly young teenagers where I live) that put 6 inch lifts on the 4x4 trucks so no matter if their lights are aligned properly or not, they still blind you. Then they wanna put those crappy 100w bulbs in them, so it REALLY makes it hard to see, if they are behind you, or coming at you from the opposite direction. And even if you bright them, the light just goes up to the middle of their bumper. That's what they SHOULD be cracking down on.

alexus

iTrader: (1)

i think this is insane to "ban" HID technology due to some people can't (ab)use them properly.

GS4Will

on problems with certain(not all) trucks on the road....i agree 100%....here in LA, come in all ages and sizes...when i was driving home tonight cruzing @~70mph..this suv just kept on flashing his wannabe hid at me..and you know what, it was driven by a 40-45 year-old woman....in her waaayyy too tall ford....

lex400sc

They won't ban OEM HID because they are all DOT-specced and pass every government regulation for automotive lighting there is. HID kits will remain legal as well for off-road lighting purposes. What they will crack down on (hopefully) are aftermarket green/blue/purple HID bulbs that cause glare no matter how well aimed.

There hasn't been a single automobile accident attributed to HIDs so the point of safety is moot. OEM HID doesn't scatter any more than an OEM halogen. These same stupid complaints happened back in the 50's when people ******ed about those "super bright halogen lights". What it is is the phenominon of pure white light and color flicker on the road that draws motorists into staring directly at them. That is all. People that complain about HIDs don't even know what HID is. They probably just think it's an overrated 120watt halogen bulb or something. That or they have "bulb envy" when they see a Lexus from five car lengths behind them lighting up more road ahead of him than his own ride is.

If anything should be banned it's lift kits that line up truck headlights straight on with your mirrors and eye level. Those bastards blind you no matter what you do!

Manaray

I agree with the Truck/SUV issue...I don't have a problem with HID's from oncoming cars...however, in an untinted car at nigtht, bright lights from the rear are rather annoying (but they're usually *****ed up halogens)...

Dunno, I think tint will fix those problems!

mooretorque

As far as that goes, nobody ought to be *****ing about HIDs till they've dealt with all the ********* who use driving or fog lights all the time (which, if aftermarket, are always misaligned, usually to the left into oncoming traffic).

GS400_PUSHER

Well I'm keeping mine......LOL thats what I am gonna tell them when it all comes down!!!!!!

BananaGS

the complaints about HID have been around as long as the first HID head light was introduced in car. this is no News. ppl complaint all they want, and then go out and buy a new car with HID on it w/o any complaint.

there are lot of debate on HID on the car for quite sometime now. Today, every luxury car have them, why? human nature, they like to complaint. make them feel good about themself.

(BTW, every single street light are HID, the technology has been around for decades) wait til LED technology become popular in car, now I am talking about laser sharp beam pattern. will see if anyone will complaint.

lex400sc

LEDs won't make it beyond signal lighting. They are bright and efficient, but they suck at projecting light. Lumen vs Candel power. They'll only make it as far as brake and signal lighting.

Skulinex

I can't remember exactly where I read this, but it said something about the problems with HIDs is not the lights itself but people actually looking at them.. basically what its is that people has been used for many many years to the regular halogen type of color, so they pretty much expect every other car on the road to look around the same at night, therefore not even bother or care about looking directly at the other headlights... but then here it comes this little bluish/purplish flickering light very far away on their rear view mirrors, or on the road ahead,then the eye's first reaction is to actually glance at it or follow it more than it would do to a regular halogen, since the patern/color is so unusual, and for that fraction of second or more that the person takes to look at that light <longer than to a regular> of course they will get blind for a while since the light is a lot whiter!!, but basically, STOP STARING at them!!!! they are meant to HELP you see at nite not for you to look directly at them....

BananaGS

actually, LED can be use for headlight, just not the LED you see now. i've seen some articles on this technology being use as hightlight. will have to wait to see who gonna do this first

here is an example, Mercedes Maybach Concept car
this is what driving in style is all about =)
http://www.autoweb.com.au/start_150/...1/article.html

or an article from here
http://www.autospeed.co.nz/A_1122/page1.html

http://www.fleet-central.com/af/pass....cfm?rank=1843

lex400sc

Banana, the first two links are expressly using LEDs as backup auxiliary lighting. The Maybach uses LED in the taillights, which is good because tailights are signal lighting and are not supposed to project light. LED also has a faster reaction time therefore LED brake lights come on a fracion of a second quicker. If you have an LED third brake light in your spoiler (as I do), you can observe the timing difference. The second link has an array of LED parking lights, but the low beam is still a projector light and the high beam is still a freeform reflector.

That Ford Tonka concept claims to use LED headlights and foglights which is interesting. I've seen kits online that use a circular LED array around a projector to imitate the BMW halos (angel eyes). I've never heard of LEDs replacing halogen or HID as primary lighting, but we'll see how that concept fares. Still though, there is yet to be an LED bulb that is brighter in lumens than a filament or gas discharge bulb.