Back when I lived in rural Wisconsin, it got pretty dark on the highways at night. The old-school sealed beam headlights were marginal at best. You couldn’t see very far ahead, nor were the ditches illuminated very well.
When halogen bulbs came out, it was like night and day (heh heh). Suddenly, I could see all those deer standing off the road, and avoid them.
Now that many cars have LED headlights, and in such weird shapes, how well do they work? I neither own a car with strings of LEDs for headlights, nor drive in the rural lands after dark anymore, so I don’t have a clue.
Do anyone have them in the country? How well do you see, compared to halogen sealed beams? Are they good, or a giant step backwards in the name of fashion?
If I may tag along… I don’t have them, but wonder about their lack of heat. A regular or halogen bulb will melt off and keep snow and ice off your headlight lenses.
LEDs will heat up quite nicely. I don’t know how much in an automotive environment but my bicycle lights will get uncomfortably warm very quickly if I’m not moving.
I assume that depends on exactly how the bulb is set up. When we first started getting LED stop lights in Wisconsin (at least where I am) we had a huge problem. Every time it snowed, the stop lights would get covered in snow and the lights didn’t generate enough heat to melt it.
By the way, the “string of LED lights” you see on many cars are not headlights. They are daytime running lights. Their purpose is to be seen, not to illuminate the road. On many cars, the actual headlights are halogen or xenon, surrounded by LED daytime running lights. Very few car models have actual LED headlights. And actual LED headlights look more like xenon headlights (a few small lenses, not a long row of many LEDs).
