Since moving to the US a few years ago it seem like I am dazzled by the glare of headlights far more often that I was when I was living in the UK.
I remember hearing (from my dad, I think, who used to be an auto-mechanic) that car headlights in the UK were angled slightly towards the passenger side so as not to dazzle the drivers coming towards you or in front of you. Also, I remember when we took my parents car to France we had to place a black sticker over part of the headlight so that we did not dazzle the on coming traffic as we were driving on the opposite side of the road.
So, are the headlights on American cars angled at all? Either horizontally or vertically? Or, am I just being blinded by all the huge SUVs and mini-vans out there?
Ideally, headlights in the US are aimed to give the broadest coverage of the road in front of the car. This doesn’t always happen, of course, and with the new HID lights coming into use people often find themselves dazzled by by the headlights of oncoming cars.
Specifications call for low (dipped) beam headlights in the U.S. to be aimed somewhat down and right (curb side) of center. They do not provide a differential depending upon the height of the lamps from the ground, so the driver of a low-slung car will get blinded by SUV’s, pickups, etc., but not vice versa.
Americans are rude, greedy and egotistic. HID lights produce a hue that it thought by many to cause glare and temporary night blindness to oncoming drivers - yea like that’s safer then standard bulbs :rolleyes: , and cars w/o these expensive lights buy blue tinted bulbs to simulate them - many with extra brightness, mainly to look cool, improved sight by these bulbs are in question and actually a more yellow bulb would most likely be better.
The greed is by headlight manufactures which see an opportunity to sell many pairs of blueish bulbs to people looking to swap them out for cool looking bulbs, regardless of safety.
Also the DOT specified headlights that don’t work that well, producing a dim spot in the center of view.
I hate those bulbs, they can dazzle even during the evening hours :mad:
I’ve always heard too that headlights in the UK are supposed to be tilted slightly to the left to avoid dazzling oncoming cars. The last time I drove at night and checked that I thought I could see that the light beam nearest the centre of the road was slightly to the left while the light to the side of the road was pretty much straight ahead.
You know, part of the problem could be the number of stupid, rude Americans who drive around with their [expletive deleted] high-beams on all the time.
Ideally, headlights in the U.S. are aligned so that the high beams point straight forward and the low beams point slightly downwards and to the passenger side (the filaments for the high and low beams are in different locations inside the bulb.) The headlights on most cars are properly aligned, but you occassionally get blinded by a car that has a headlight pointing up and to the left. The vehicle inspections in most states check for headlight alignment, though a lot of inspectors just go through the motions.
Out of curiousity, do the headlights in the U.S. look whiter or yellower than the ones in the U.K.? I seem to recall that HID headlights are the standard in Europe. The light given off by these has a bluish color and the dispersion pattern is different from the halogen headlights used in the U.S. We can’t stand HID headlights over here and think that they blind us, but I’ve heard that Europeans feel the same way about our halogen headlights.