Quote:
Originally Posted by dsraven
personally, I think LED's are worth the money. white light instead of pale orange light. makes things brighter/crisper/sharper.
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Being a professional driver with over 4 million miles of nighttime driving experience with every type of lighting system imaginable, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this subject.
Brighter headlights don't mean better visibility. Lighting the road in front of you brighter is much like being in a brightly-lit room and trying to see outside into the dark night. A brightly illuminated road surface actually makes one's pupils constrict, limiting night vision. Yes, it may be brighter, but no, you can't see better. I've driven trucks where guys raved about their new driving lights, only to find that the road surface was so bright that I couldn't see anything beyond the light pattern - kinda like standing next to a campfire and trying to see into the dark woods.
Brighter headlamps are nothing new; we've always had the technology to make brighter lights. It's just that nowadays people seem to have lost the common sense to realize that brighter lights cause severe vision problems for oncoming drivers. Too many people install the latest high-tech lighting systems, then never bother to get them properly aimed. I've seen motorists followed off freeway exits and their new expensive lights smashed out by irate drivers.
Whiter lights are also an illusion that persists from the old days of automotive generators which made the lights brighter/whiter when you revved the engine. Kelvin-rating (the scale of lamps from yellow to blue) is nothing more than a color distinction. If whiter light were better, they wouldn't make freeway street lamps yellow/orange sodium bulbs.