Nova5

To me it looks like the recall list. 24 and 24

FLAWLS1T/A

iTrader: (1)

Its all 25 that were recalled

v8maro

iTrader: (4)

wow, you're retarded, seriously.

You can't make everyone happy, so deal with it, I have bright headlights, OH NOES THE WORLD IS GUNNA ENDS!!!!!

You have no basis for what you are saying, show me a story where someone was KILLED because of bright ******* headlights!

I've had them on my car for 3 years now, NO ONE has died because of me.

-Steve

meissenation

iTrader: (2)

Steve, don't you wave back when people honk and wave at you? I saw you on Long Lake Rd a few times about a month ago, maybe less.

v8maro

iTrader: (4)

the car is so loud I never hear honks /sarcasm I see people flashing me with their high-beams all the time tho /sarcasm

SporkLover

iTrader: (2)

They dont make HID projectors for a Camaro... but its not that hard to retro fit a HID projector into the headlight housing.

HIDPLANET has everything you will need for a retro fit for a single beam system (that way you can retain your Halogen highs if you wish...) Add wires and a relay and you are in business.

ss1129

iTrader: (16)

i hate them goddamned headlights. All of them.

meissenation

iTrader: (2)

I was right behind you, man! lol

92SilverSHO

iTrader: (3)

So it seems we have tons of engineers and such on this site, why doesnt someone make some projector housings for our cars, especially camaros since i think its easier and make a killing? I mean obviously you would be rolling in dough with a product thats in demand, no?

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Study questions high-intensity headlights

By James R. Healey USA TODAY


Conventional headlights illuminate the center of the road better than high-intensity lights do, making ordinary lights safer at night on straight roads, says a new study by University of Michigan experts.

The findings on the blazing, blue-white, high-intensity-discharge (HID) lights come as medical and vision researchers blame HID lights for blinding, migraine-headache auras and for lessening the night vision of older drivers.

The developments suggest that HID lights could be worse than simply the glare-producing nuisance they've been considered.



The study, by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), compares performance of HID and tungsten-halogen headlights. "The report does not show the visual advantages of HIDs to be as great as a lot of people in the lighting community probably expected," says Michael Flannagan, a senior researcher on the study, published in June.

Overall, it shows that HID lights put out more illumination than tungsten-halogen ones, but mainly to the sides of the road rather than straight ahead. "The extra width (of an HID beam) is good for curves, but our overall position ... is that light right down the middle is more important for safety," Flannagan says.

The report notes that tungsten-halogens also do a better job:

Than some HIDs illuminating distant pedestrians and markings on the right side of the road.
Than HIDs illuminating distant, overhead signs and signs on the left shoulder at all distances.
But, Flannagan emphasizes, HIDs produce less glare than tungsten-halogens, not more, in nearly every circumstance. "That's the reverse of what people expect."

The report concludes that HID lights' "promise for improving the nighttime safety of driving" has been "partially met."

Two other researchers think HIDs are a hazard. Neither has studied HIDs directly, but both say their research and complaints from patients and clients support concerns about the lights.

Dr. Nouchine Hadjikhani, who teaches at Harvard University and writes and speaks widely about migraine research, says some patients report blinding, pre-migraine auras after sudden exposure to HID lights, as when rounding a curve. "They are debilitated," she says. "They have to just pull over."

About 2.6 million in the USA experience migraine auras, she estimates. Even if that's too few to be an emergency, it's enough to pose a danger, Hadjikhani says.

Beyond that, she says HID lights "bleach your retinas, and you don't see very well for a few seconds."

Kent Higgins, vice president for vision research at Lighthouse International, a not-for-profit vision institute headquartered in New York City, says drivers 55 and older "have a problem with headlights, and it'll be even bigger with high-intensity headlights."

Many who complain about headlights "mention the high-intensity lights specifically," he says.

One Higgins study showed that it took more than a second for the eyes of a 57-year-old to snap back to normal after momentary headlight glare vs. half a second for a 20-year-old. At 60 mph, younger drivers' eyes recover fast enough to spot hazards after 44 feet. Older drivers' eyes needed twice that distance.

UMTRI's Flannagan says, "There are some things that could be happening outside the scope of what I'm investigating — the migraines, for instance. It could be entirely reasonable, but I'd like to have more evidence."

He says that both Higgins' and UMTRI's views on HID glare could co-exist because the tests are different. Higgins shines the glare at the test subject briefly. UMTRI keeps it on up to 20 seconds.

"There's definitely room for both" views, that HIDs can be dangerous sometimes, benign or helpful other times, he says.

Spokesman Rae Tyson says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is taking comments on headlight glare, is "serious about assessing the safety implications. Our folks will take the research into consideration as they review the issue."


[B]Is somebody going to HAVE to die before you'll give up your precious lights?

The Professor

iTrader: (3)

...and that study is questioning OEM HIDs in their full form, projectors and all. not the half-assed "true" HID kit w/o projectors. having that **** is so ghetto, you prolly couldn't even find a study on it.

VIP1

thesoundandthefury,

After reading that, the only thing I got out of it is that staring at headlights (especially bright headlights) is a bad idea....no ****. And that older peoples eyes react slower.....again no ****.

The rest of the article is way too subjective and doesnt state what was actually tested and how.

No offense to you, I just think that article is lacking in information.

BTW, I'm not supporting those that just put HID bulbs in Halogen reflectors. If you are gonna do it, do it right, go projectors.

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Yeah but see this is precisely the problem: you and alot of other people in this country operate under the mentality that you need a study or a law to tell you what is and isn't acceptable. There are people who don't give a rats @ss who's toes they step on or who gets hurt by their actions until a law is shoved down their throats. And even then, for some people that isn't even enough of a reason not to.
This study is just one of many, and it's only the beginning. We haven't seen any laws about HID put into effect yet because HID technology is fairly new and the wheels of government turn slowly. There will eventually be laws about this. The fact that FLAWLS1T/A was able to compile a list of TWENTY-FIVE different companies that have already been banned from making this crap should tell you something, but I guess you're one of the ones who needs to be told by a scientist, a judge, or a cop before it sinks in.

Common sense? Who needs that when we've got the Federal Government?

John -- '02 HAWK

All it says is that those companys were building complete HID kits after the law was changed. it doesnt say anything to as the quality of those products just that the were developing HIDs for car that orginally didnt have them.

Dont you find it strange that new cars can have HIDs, while the same companies cant sell HID kits on the aftermarket?

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Uhh, I think it says pretty plainly that all those kits were either recalled or terminated?

Not at all. This might shed some light on why:

http://www.memagazine.org/backissues.../letlight.html


What it boils down to is that manufacturing standards can be regulated. Since cars are mass-produced, all they need to do is make one decision about how the lighting system should be implemented and how it will function and go from there. In the aftermarket scheme though, this is next to impossible. Why? Because there's no way to control or monitor how John-Q-Public is gonna mount his lights, and in what fashion. This article makes it pretty clear that aiming your lights correctly is pretty much mandatory to even be remotely considered within the "safe" area of operation. So if you have a bunch've people who buy aftermarket light kits and either don't follow the directions or just disregard them, you have a recipe for disaster. While the stuff you see that gets recalled or discontinued may not necessarily be because of a "quality" issue, it's usually due to the fact that the product was designed to be a "universal" application, and the predictability of how the end user will implement the lights becomes null and void. (Example: somebody buys a universal XENON bulb and drills holes in their factory headlight housings and mounts the XENON bulbs in place of the original factory bulbs. Ignorance on the part of the owner means the bulbs are being incorrectly used and will result in performing in a manner that the manufacturer didn't intend for it to.)

John -- '02 HAWK

LOL again it says nothing about the quality just that law changed in the way those kits could be sold.

Nope that link doesnt help at all in explaining why HELLA cannot sell an intire aftermaket lighting kit in the USA (which they used to). It helps explain why you dont think they shouldnt have them. as does your post which makes assumptions about the general public and the unregulated production. It would have been just as easy to regulate an aftermarket HID kit by saying that all HIDs must meet some specification (as the EU standard would have been easy to modify), and be DOT approved, and to ban the importation of such kits. which would mean the kits would have to have been built in the USA, and therefore regulated. It would also have been as simple to regulate the sales of HID ballests. yes the cost would go up, but at the same time it makes it easier for the correct system to be installed.

but we dont have that we have a system know that lets unregulated HIDs get installed. The argument shouldnt be against HIDs but against DIY components that dont have the proper leveling or cutoffs. Which is information that is hard to come by to do it right. while a regulated kit would have already have that problem solved

v8maro

iTrader: (4)

Even after reading that, I want to get some high-beam HID's and drive around with those on 24/7.

My point is, you're crying over lights, go cry over something IMPORTANT

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

You totally missed my point about quality. Quality is a worthless issue to argue about, because it wouldn't matter if you had a top of the line kit that could be found on a Mercedes or some cheap junk you could buy at Autozone: the fact of the matter remains that there's no way to determine how any individual customer is going to USE that kit, and whether they will use it within the guidelines that were specified by the manufacturer. How hard is this to understand?

"Among the reasons that European standards mandate self-leveling HID systems while U.S. standards don't may be the different philosophies that guide lighting system design. According to Michael Flannagan, a senior scientist at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, European regulators' concern over glare contrasts with U.S. regulators' emphasis on maximizing vision. For many decades, low beam patterns have been different between the two regions, he said."

Pay closer attention to how the article explains "auto-leveling". The first European made vehicles that were manufactured with HID technology didn't have this. Now all of a sudden, they feel the need to revise the design so that they do. Hmm, wonder why?

How exactly would you change the system so that HID's, whether they be regulated or unregulated, get installed and used properly? According to your logic, all an HID kit needs to work properly is for it to be regulated. What are you going to do if Joe Blow buys an OEM BMW kit that was regulated FOR BMW'S, and decides he's gonna re-engineer it to fit into his 4th gen Camaro headlight assembly? Or do you have that much faith in the general public's engineering skills?

Rescue Ranger

iTrader: (10)

It seems so hard for people to achieve the perfect HID appearance unless the housing was specifically designed to do so. A friend had an authentic JDM front end on his 98 GSR, and to get real HID headlights with the conversion was literally $2000 more! He got the HID lookalikes and.. welp it looked good enough and of course as a halogen setup, it didn't have any glare, until he added a 9006 kit and comparatively to the OEM Xenon JDM lights, looked :puke:

Both of my parents cars have HIDs from the factory, and since we live in a tremendously hilly (and at times foggy) area, I lowered their beams a little so when they hit a bump at night they don't blind other people thus sending them off a cliff. The width of their lights though are incredible, and have a huge benefit over halogen since there is considerable threat for deer.

I guess conclusively HID kits can be classified as something to stay away from since they don't add any value to the car, i.e. performance, safety, and pose a threat to other people.

When I see true OEM Xenon headlights coming my way, I admire the beautiful lights, but a HID 'kit' car is easy to spot and looks nowhere near the same level of quality.

... my .02 though .02 isn't worth much these days is it?

Urban Legend

iTrader: (5)

I am sending a copy of this thread to Arnold in Cali. Maybe we can get these HID kits banned in Cali first. Not!