Night driving

What happens when people start deciding that their HIDs and xenons are not bright enough because their night vision has been annihilated by everyone else's HIDs and xenons?

 

Be careful if changing to brighter bulbs; if you've got an older car, new brighter bulbs can cause electrical issues, melting of wiring etc. I had all this when looking at getting brighter bulbs for my 2004 car, as there are a lot of unlit lanes where I live

 

Agreed. I went for ones that had a small increase in brightness but were still within manufacturers guidelines. Just in case

 

In my case brighter lights let me see the verge more clearly / safely when passing oncoming traffic in the country lanes around here. I am sure plenty of cars lights poorly aligned, but for cars with dipped lights that favouring illuminating the nearside verge well, rather than the oncoming traffic on the offside, I don't see that it will make much difference to oncoming traffic.

My experience with Astronomy is that night vision is wreck by light in an instant. When using the telescope at night if I needed to come indoors (or even near the light spilling from the house) I would close my viewing eye tightly, and only use my other eye to navigate; when I came into the house I would cover it with the palm of my hand. Otherwise it would be a good 20 minutes to get full night vision back again. If you fancy trying it - sitting watching telly or whatever with your hand over your viewing eye for 10 minutes or more - and then go outside, and only then uncover your eye, the difference in night vision between Left and Right is quite surprising.

You may have a point that brighter light takes longer to recover from, but I suspect that a high percentage - 90% maybe? - is lost immediately whatever oncoming light is encountered - even someone turning on the courtesy light inside the car will probably do that.

 

The easiest way to keep your night vision, with oncoming cars is to glance to the left, until past
You still see the car and the road, but the oncoming headlight is not hitting the retina at full 90 degrees

Jack McH

 

So how does the car past an MOT, or do they have to change the lights evey time it goes for the MOT???

 

Xenons aren't a nice type of lighting imo

 

I'd presume they'd have to be changed, same if you had an illegal font number plate. Or have a mate who is the tester...

 

If you take the same car to two different MOT testers on the same day, you'll get two different results.

I was reading about lights elsewhere recently, and apparently many MOT testers simply don't understand all the rules. If the beam sits below the appropriate line on the wall of the test centre, its a pass, when in fact in some cases it should be a fail.

Remember, the MOT rules say that the technician is not to remove anything as part of the test. I believe they are not even allowed to open the bonnet. That means he/she has no chance of taking the bulbs out of the headlights to see what kind they are. That means it is purely down to judgement, unless the angle is outside of the defined limits.

Since I got my night time driving glasses, which are not shades, I've been able to see the problem for myself. Whereas before, oncoming lights would be a mass of blinding light where you can't see what's what, as all the diffused light is cut out by the fact the lenses are polarised, and the night vision wrecking part of the spectrum is suppressed, I can see that quite often one headlight on a vehicle points at a completely different angle to the other. Its surprising how many vehicles this is true of. At a guess, without actually counting, I'd say its about half of them.

 

The difference in your wallet can be huge too! If the bulb or ballast fails expect to pay £90'ish per unit for decent replacements, plus labour (3hrs on a Reno Espace!).
If a bird (for example) takes the headlamp out it's probably best done through your insurance!

Only if a higher wattage bulb has been used along with a higher rated fuse. Only a muppet would uprate the fuse rating on any car, let alone a modern car with several kilometres of wiring!

Nope. As Clueless says they are not allowed to take anything apart to check (that includes removing covers), and cannot fail "because it may have".

Spot on!

They are. But they cannot remove any covers or anything else to carry out a visual inspection. Madness!