I would agree with most of that. I was desperate for better light and gave them a try. Optics/pattern were terrible. They were brighter by far but I never felt the lighting was good. The number of folks waving with their middle finger also tells you it's a bum setup. To keep the finger wagging to a minimum you have to lower the lights to the point you don't gain anything. The other problem is that horrible beam patter really comes to haunt you in the fog or snow. Headlights are up too high for fog and brighter scattered light is even worse.

The only thing I did prefer is the slightly whiter color of the 5k's I was running. The visibility on wet roads seemed better with that color. I think I'll try installing these in the fog lights and see what happens. If I can run them on wet roads it would be worth it because the factory fogs are worthless.

i put yellow HID fogs in and I have the Hella projectors to replace my fogs, just have to get to my shop

The research does make a lot of sense. Car manufacturers put a lot of thought into their design and the lighting is part of that. Car lights were never designed for optimum use but for safety while driving at night. The average distance that any OEM light will shine is about the same distance it would take you to stop from 50mph to 0. If you go any faster you are driving beyond the visual of the light beam.

In other words, a car traveling at 50mph would see a dear entering the light beam ahead of the car at a distance of about 80ft and have enough time to bring the car to a stop, where at 60mph the stopping distance may be 115ft but you would not see the dear until it enters the beam 80ft away.

The only reason why some people want more light and distance is so they can drive faster. Safety is in the speed of the vehicle and not in the distance any particular light can shine.

That is why fog is such a pain because it limits vision and we are forced to drive slower. No amount of light will penetrate fog since it is made up of tiny water droplets that reflect any light into all directions including blinding the driver’s eyes. Fog lights are used because of their positioning at the low end of the bumper to shine along the bottom of the fog where it is not as dense. More light there would also be useless since your vision is already obstructed from the fog above it.

All Aftermarket lighting is, is to feed the ego of man and make money for the manufacturer & distributors. Of course, there is lighting for off-road driving but that is not where I or 99% of the other drivers out there drive 99% of the time.

For me, I do a lot of higher speed driving on deserted (for the most part) roads. I usually run 70 or so and the real problem is deer of the 200# variety. The Hellas have really widened the pattern and I've aimed them high so I can see the banks of the road. The other big downside of the OEM lights is the high-beam cut-off. You get no light UP the other side of the hill as you're going down so you drastically cut your distance. I'm sold on the auxilliary lights.

I know this is an old thread....BUT... I've read this before and it all "makes sense". I certainly don't have the ability or desire to test this. But how is it that many car manufacturers at one point used HID lighting in regular housing (not projectors). Cadillac, lincoln, Toyota, mercury... just to name a few off the top of my head. And last I knew, Lincoln still uses the regular housing on their town car and it has HID lights. And there hasn't been any recalls on any of these cars. Any insight here?

newpath wrote:Any insight here?

The reflectors are specifically designed for HID and are very different from halogen reflectors. If you look at cars with stock hid/reflector setup, only the top half of the reflector is illuminated unlike the halogen counterparts. The blinding of oncoming drivers when running HIDs in halogen reflectors is caused by the reflection on the bottom of the reflector bowl. Some have tried adding shrouds on the bottom of HID bulbs to stop this, but it's pretty ghetto and doesn't work well.