3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Before I read that you could just pop out the green center plastic, I had already ordered the H9 connector plugs from FBS. Everything you need and more comes with these plugs so I am not disappointed I ordered them. One thing I discovered was that you could pop out the green center plastic and then pop the yellow center plastic from the H9 connector plugs and the OEM H11 plug becomes a H9 plug without unpinning the OEM H11 plug. The new Philips H9 bulb plugs right in. I am sure this is not new knowledge to FBS but I just though I would let everyone else know if you didn't already. Sure beats unpinning anything. I installed the German Philips H9's in the low beams in place of the OEM H11's and really like the difference they make. I also changed out my Fog lights out to Tungsram H11-55NHP/BP2 Nighthawk Platinum bulbs and they are significantly brighter also. Thanks for Crashnburn80 for doing all of this research and keeping me from spending all of the money on LED bulbs to find out they were not any better and thanks to daveeeasa for supplying quality parts.

 

Looks like CoPlus has resulted to gimmicks without the guide of TRS. Multi-color requires multiple emitters, which means both emitters cannot be in proper placement/focus. It would be nice if manufacturers spent R&D on making the best headlights possible instead of gimmicky features that cost more and reduce performance.

 

Interesting article.

Blinded by your lights: In a battle to see, why are blinding headlights winning?


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/dri...-a-battle-to-see-why-are-blinding-headlights/

 

The article is behind a pay wall.

 

Oh crap. It worked for me.

Blinded by your lights: In a battle to see, why are blinding headlights winning?
Andrew Clark

There are three types of headlights: tungsten-halogen, Xenon high-intensity discharge (HID) lights and light-emitting diodes (LED).Willowpix

If there is one thing drivers hate, it’s not being able to see while driving. There’s something about being able to see and then suddenly having your vision blasted by a fiery shaft of blue light that’s a turn off. I occasionally receive e-mails from readers lamenting this fact. In late December, I received another. “How about [a column] focusing on the blinding intensity of newer headlights?” wrote Kirk. “Some are so bright, I’m left wondering if the oncoming driver is trying to see into tomorrow.”

Kirk is right. As I write, countless drivers are screaming a series of expletives as they stare into headlights so bright that they leave drivers feeling as if they’ve just opened the Ark of the Covenant.

While the headlight versus “being able to see” battle seems modern, it’s been waged since the introduction of automobiles and most likely began in 1915, when Cadillac introduced low-beam headlights that drivers had to adjust manually after stopping their vehicles.

Story continues below advertisement

Today, we have three types of headlights: tungsten-halogen, Xenon high-intensity discharge (HID) lights and light-emitting diodes (LED). Introduced in the 1980s, halogen are the cheapest. Xenon (which were not named after the Bally 1980 pinball game) were introduced in 1990s. These create light by passing electricity through xenon gas. They produce three times the illumination of halogen lights, but HID’s signature blue hue does not trigger a strong reflexive pupil-closing reaction. The eye is left more open and vulnerable to searing glare. The automobile industry “solved” this problem by creating LED headlights, which became popular in the 2010s. LEDs don’t produce a lot of heat or drain the car battery, have long lifespans and are around 275-per-cent brighter than halogens. That said, LED should stand for “Legally Eye Damaging.”

A 2022 study of 2,700 drivers conducted by RAC, a British automotive services company, found 89 per cent of drivers think “some or most car headlights on the U.K.’s roads are too bright, with an overwhelming majority of these 88 per cent saying they get dazzled by them while driving. In December, Transport Canadarecalled 85,685 GM cars, SUVs and trucks because their “daytime running lamps that stay on could cause glare for oncoming drivers and increase the risk of a crash.”

According to ABC 8News in Richmond, Va., a politician wants a statewide ban on blue headlights. “Senator Lionell Spruill (D-Chesapeake) submitted the legislation ahead of the General Assembly’s January session. The law would ban all car modifications designed to make headlights ‘appear as a blue light, such as by covering the headlights with a tinting film or by using blue bulbs.’”

Why do drivers feel more blinded than ever before? While LED-lovers argue that properly installed LEDs should not be blinding, there are aspects of the LED that lead to vision trouble. Put simply, HID (and more specifically LED) headlights emit far more blue light than halogen lights. “The problem with LED headlights is that they are incompatible with dark adapted human eyesight,” wrote John Lincoln for the England-based advocacy group Lightaware. “Particularly for older drivers – they are too bright, too blue, too ‘concentrated’ and blinding over too long a distance … the bluer spectrum of light from LED headlights disables the night adapted vision of the human eye to a much greater extent than that of conventional halogen headlights – pupil size is more strongly correlated to blue light than yellow light.”


Another factor is vehicle height. Jacked-up SUVs put their headlights blaring right at driver level. Add to this the reality that driving is done on a series of hills, flats and dips, and you get frequent bouts of brazen pupil-incinerating headlights.

Finally, LEDs cast focused directional light. An LED light is like a focused laser compared to more diffuse halogen light. If this light hits you directly in the eyes, it brings its full concentration. Hence the “do not go into the light” near-death experience.

How long will we have to be stunned by the glare of LED and HID headlights? Unfortunately, we’ll wait for the next advance the automobile industry has to offer. At the moment, this appears to be “advanced forward lighting systems” that automatically adapt to driving conditions and which, so the theory goes, also “adapt” to not blinding oncoming drivers. Given the fact that when LEDs were introduced, they were considered a solution to the blinding blue of HIDs, we can expect to be dazzled by “advanced forward lighting systems” too.

The war on blinding headlights has begun and, like most wars, it will never really end.

 

A bit simplistic
LEDs are blue do to the 6000/6500K color temp used. If they were capped at 4000K it would not be a bad
Also if new cars were required to have proper headlight calitation done instead of the half assed aming they do it it would help a lot
and a hard crackdown on the LED halogen retrofits sellers

 

I'm mentioned thoughts on this before. FMVSS 108 headlight compliance tests spec candela intensity values for headlight compliance. So while the 6000k OEM LED headlight and the 3200k halogen headlight might both meet the same test criteria based on intensity, the 6000k LED light contains significantly more blue light which human eyes are far more sensitive to. If hit with the the same amount of light from an oncoming vehicle in halogen and 6000k LED, the LED lamps are going to cause significantly more duress and visibility issues to the oncoming driver than the halogens. The issues are not that the lamps are brighter, as they must all meet the same legal requirements, it is that people's eyes are far more sensitive to being blasted with blue light and the headlight compliance tests do not take that into consideration.

 

These guys are annoying.

 

I only find properly aimed OEM LEDs blinding when the vehicle in opposing traffic is on any sort of incline. If both vehicles are facing each other on flat ground, then the LEDs aren't dazzling.

 

I think limiting the color temp to 4000k would help alot. This would also help eliminate all the drop-in led garbage since they are all 6000k+

 

Lol right..

 

Here is an archived link, which handily bypasses the paywall.

https://archive.ph/2C2TF

 

Unvaccinated drivers - well study could be true but some data would be useful. Correlation may not be cause and effect, there could be other factors.

 

when one makes poor choices in one part of their life they tend to make poor choices in many parts of their life, so....

 

Well said, and I agree.

 

WTF

 

Depends entirely on what is considered a poor choice...

And now, back on topic...

The linked article's discusses a VA senator wants to "ban blue headlights." Congratulations to him and his voter base, because that's already been done. Federally, all vehicles main lighting are regulated, under CFR 49 volume 6, chapter 5, part 571, subchapter B, Sub-Section 108.
Or FMVSS108 for shorthand.

https://ecfr.io/Title-49/Section-571.108

If you'd like to scroll down (and it is Quite a scroll) there is a handy-dandy color reference chart, which designates areas of the color space as being defined as certain "colors," of light, as different colors have different meanings. They define a large chunk for white light, red, amber, this same color chart is referenced for defining paint colors, for example "school bus yellow," by certain states.

Now, most states whose regs I have spent time looking at (more than a handful at this point) all "incorporate by reference," this federal regulation (fmvss108) somewhere in their own motor vehicle lighting codes... because the feds took it upon themselves with the creation of NHTSA to standardize the mess of vastly different/outdated state regs for headlights, taillights, marking lamps, turn signals etc. No one is stopping every half mile to fire flares to warn farmers in the area that there is a motor vehicle approaching, for example.

The color space that defines "white light" is what is required for (legitimate manufacturers that care) a headlamp bulb to be sold as a headlamp bulb. And that is just one of the many, many standards it must meet. These standards are federal, and the states can't necessarily require different standards for these (although some have tried, iirc Maryland or maybe it was NJ was trying to sue the maker of the PT Cruiser for having insufficiently large illuminated areas of their brake lights lenses... which didn't get very far, if anyone cares to look it up, because they were compliant with the federal codes relevant to brake light lens illuminated area,etc).

So while a senator might get some props for rousing at the pulpit about such a concern, unless they get NHTSA and SAE to redefine what balance/proportion of red, green and blue wavelengths of light make "white," then we are going to be stuck with the range of "poorly driven incandescent sealed beam" to "6500k 'white' with one hell of a blue wavelength dominant spike," and everything in between.

Besides the fact that most white LEDs are a blue diode with a color converting phosphor to produce some red and green, it is the marketing departments of major manufacturers, and the SAE in some small part allowing their research to reach these conclusions, that make fantasies like "daylight white headlamps reduce eye strain at night," and "you can see better with blue dominant spectrums," oft-repeated lines. Manufacturing of LEDs has reached a stage where they can make high power LEDs combined with tailored phosphors that result in just a small step-back in total efficiency, but result in significantly lower color temperatures, much more even spectrums of light output, and even high output, High Color Rendering even at north of 5000k.

But the OEMs spec cold white, low CRI LEDs, because they can get them for pennies cheaper per unit, and uninformed customers still make the connection between "blue headlamps" = "better headlamps," which goes all the way back to the introduction of HIDs (domestically, iirc with cadillac or mercury???) and with high end BMWs. You can see this with some of the LED headlamps (not just retrofit bulbs) crashnburn80 has tested. Iirc the toyota 4runner projector lowbeam was 6000k and low-60's CRI. While it may have excellent light distribution, glare control and intensity, I look at that result and say "yes I would still choose the poor performing halogen projector over that."

 

Now, part of my personal, completely anecdotal, take on the "headlights are getting 'too bright'" issue is that while the upper limits for intensity have been raised several times, allowing higher performing, further reaching headlamps (which is a good thing), the floor of these same standards has never been addressed. The same lower limits of intensity that make a legal headlamp are the same as they have been since the only option was the sealed beam 7" round incandescent. So even new vehicles can have headlamps, which are fully legally compliant, that basically have the same performance as a 60+yo vehicle. But they are used on the road, and sold in the same year as other vehicles whose manufacturers have spec'd high oerformance headlamps. SAE and NHTSA have never pulled their heads out of their asses to say "yes, all standards should be raised over time." That's not to say they haven't exhaustovely studied such a decision, and they haven't had tremendous internal debates about such a change. But they still allow extremely poor performing headlamps to be as fully legally compliant, as much higher performing lamps.


Now, the glare limits are the same, and much of the increased glare probably comes from mis-aimed lamps/overloaded vehicles etc. But you can have a trash performing lowbeam that maxes out the glare limits, and a much higher output lamp that meets the minimum glare levels required (because some light above the cutoff is necessary).

This leads to a significant gap in observable glare, and much cinfusion and aggravation on the part of everybody in traffic.

 

I had massive squat on my '05 for a bit while I was getting the front coilovers figured out. Like over 1", maybe 2+" of squat. And I hadn't adjusted headlights b/c I knew I needed to fix the suspension so I didn't want to mess with it. I drove once at night and I could tell I was being an incredible a-hole, it was just super obvious, so I turned around about a mile from home and swapped vehicles. And that's stock wattage bulbs (granted AGM and HKB plus higher efficiency bulbs, as well as the 2G Tacoma large reflectors) not the osrams (still need to get them in and the harness).

So, 17 year old headlights can still be "too bright".

I'd like to see the state inspection include a headlight aiming option. I'd gladly pay for that service and it's something which should be done periodically. Get some budget for a machine and have a purpose built space for it, you could really streamline the process. It's annoying that I have to seek out a proper spot to do this once in a blue moon. That could also be a good chance to educate on LED bulbs (or at least document light color per vehicle).

 

Yeah, blinding lights and glare are a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I wouldn't mind having greater enforcement of lighting laws.

Here in BC, long ago we had annual vehicle inspection. This was pre emissions testing and was simply a road worthiness test. A walk around inspection, lights operate, quickly lifted off the ground to check for loose front ends, then a brake test and finally headlight adjustment. Whole process took maybe 45 minutes including wait time in the lineup.


Funniest one was showing up on my motorcycle and waiting in line for nearly an hour because of a stalled car ahead in the line. Turns out it was my father with a dead battery. LOL