Sometimes when looking at a film where cars are driving at night in Europe the headlights are colored yellow.
Why do European driving laws demand yellow headlights?
That would be French cars. Yellow headlights used to be legal requirement for cars registered in France (doesn’t seem to be the case nowadays, at least I have seen French-registered cars with white headlights). I haven’t found an explanation for the requirement.
I have seen yellow lenses on some cars in Europe, so this doesn’t really apply. Just an additional datum.
Daylight has a colour temperature of about 5600°K. Tungsten lights have a colour temperature of 3400°K. I don’t know what the CT of a headlamp is; but I think it’s lower than 3400°K, which would give them (i.e., headlamps without yellow lenses) a yellow-ish cast that the filmmaker may or may not have adjusted in processing.
IIRC, they were yellow in France AND Belgium. But I havem’t seen any yellow headlights in Europe for years. When/why did the French do away with them? (And why did they start with them in the first place – better performance in fog?)
I remember being told it was a precaution against blinding oncoming traffic in the days before dipped-headlight technology.
Back in the 1970s, if you brought a British car to France you had to stick yellow gels over your white headlights, which had a refractor in them (because left-hand driving cars’ headlights point slightly left, which is into the eyes of oncoming traffic in a right-hand driving country). I was always led to believe this was a fog thing.
I seem to recall that the yellow headlights did perform better in foggy conditions (less self-blinding compared to white headlights).
Also it seems that most dedicated “fog lights” were/are yellowish
cheers
alfred
My understaiding is it’s a anti glare measure for oncomming drivers. the yellow light is supposed to be less disturbing to night vision.
Yeah, it’s mostly about glare and such. When driving at night if you forget to dip your lights you don’t end up blinding the other drive coming towards you as much as you would with non-yellow lights and the amber lights work a lot better in fog, making the car more visible and again, reducing glare.
I’m not sure why they got rid of them but it was probably a European ruling.
These days xenon headlights are creeping more and more towards being a standard option on a new car.
My nextdoor neighbour was still doing this well into the 1990’s when he made trips onto the Continent. Was it still required, or had he got set into his ways?