How do we stop people from blinding other drivers with aftermarket LEDs?
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
This was because eye-level bumpers tend to decapitate people during pile-ups... since they are, after all, eye level...
https://youtu.be/kgcAA4HUxuE?t=229 https://youtu.be/kgcAA4HUxuE?t=388
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/iihs-recognizes-semitrailer...
The typical counter-argument to that involves some sort of abuse of the notion of freedom.
(Not endorsing, of course, just mentioning it.)
Plus I'm not even sure the general statement is really that true. The El Camino was a regular car profile. If you're just buying a pick up to haul furniture around rather than, say, bales of hay you don't need it to be that tall.
The only thing in the US that is different is that passenger vehicles don't have as strict of pedestrian standards as the EU.
I'm just saying: a semi and a lorry have the same pedestrian-unfriendly profile.
But a tall profile does not mean that headlights need to be mounted higher above the road surface. This is a simple problem in geometry.
But not for a vehicle that carries one person
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28155/how-jayne-mansfiel...
suppose on a normal height vehicle, the lowbeams are aimed so the center of the beam hits position x on the pavement ahead of the vehicle. after lifting it, you readjust them so they're still centered at x. at any position between x and the emitting vehicle, the center of the beam is still higher than it was before. if you overcompensate so the center hits the ground before x, you are illuminating less of the ground ahead which is less safe in its own way.
don't get me wrong, I am very sympathetic to this issue. I drive a pretty low car and I get blinded any time there's a pickup behind me at night.
Why not? Because some people will get very upset? Fuck 'em. They're literally killing people.
that said, this is one of those situations where most people are slightly annoyed, and a small group really wants to lift their truck. people doing specific kinds of work or living in rural and/or snowy areas may even have a legitimate reason for doing it. politically, it's hard to change things in this kind of situation.
Honestly, this problem has been getting better in recent years due to two factors:
1. Newer vehicles, particularly SUVS, are increasingly not of a body-on-frame design that is trivial to lift. It is rare to see aftermarket-lifted unibody SUVs on the road in the US.
2. Automakers have started cooperating in increasing the crash compatibility of their vehicles. For example: the Enhancing Vehicle-to-Vehicle Crash Compatibility Agreement of 2003.
My truck driver friends improved fairly quickly after I sat shotgun a couple times
I'm thinking of flashing my high beams whenever I pass drivers with lights too bright. Maybe they're just not aware. I flash my highs at drivers with their headlights off at night because it's dangerous. No reason to not do the same when it's dangerous on the other end of the spectrum.
Driving a small car at night is so difficult for me these days, especially as a person who wears glasses. Huge lifted vehicles essentially reduce my vision >50% without even using their high beams lights.
I never thought that I would want to see some regulation around maximum headlight brightness, but I really really do.
It's taken me a long time to get used to, but it seems to work. I had to break myself of the habit of using just the side view mirror for changing lanes, to ensure there is no fast moving traffic overtaking. The biggest problem there is if someone is close up on you, like in stop and go. But I can lean over a bit to adjust the side angle then or when backing into parking.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/blindzonegla...
Edit: a blog post about this: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToAdjustYourSiderearviewMi...
ISTR that there were regulations about the amount of light headlights could put out, and HIDs were more effective largely because they eliminated light going where you didn't need it, and were able to concentrate the light more out and down than up.
Self-defense Step #1: avert your eyes from the bad headlights. One of the problems is our eyes have a natural tendency to look at things which are blue at night, on account of our eyes' hyper-sensitivity to blue light.
It was sort of happy accident that early incandescent bulbs were low-blue sources of light that put out vastly more of the safe portion of the spectrum (infrared, red, orange, yellow).
Self-defense Step #2: screen out excess blue light. I wear polarized yellowish fit-over glasses at night. They help a lot. I found my current preferred pair at a clearance apparel/home goods store for $8. My backup glasses are yellow safety goggles -- these turn the bad headlights greener than the polarized goggles, but I've tended to use the polarized ones since I found them. You can spend more on "swannies" [0] or whatever, but I'm happy with my $8-$11 yellow glasses.
This was inspired by a HN comment, who told about wearing orange glasses to walk his dog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170975 My first set of orange safety glasses cut out too much light -- great for dealing with headlights, not so great for noticing pedestrians.
Of course I live in NYC and work out in Suffolk county on Long Island. So the type of vehicle blinding you varies by region and its local knuckle dragging car culture.
I'm usually driving a minivan. It's high enough that getting blinded from the rear isn't a huge issue. But I get blinded from the front -- much worse! -- all the time.
• The lights are higher color temperature than an incandescent bulb, so are perceived brighter for the same legal power output.
• The vehicle has a tall front grill because buyers want a truck-like front end to avoid being called a minivan. Once you have a grill, headlights look like eyes and it bothers people to have eyes low on a face, so the headlights end up on pretty high up from the road. The geometry of needing to be pretty much parallel to the pavement for long distance illumination and starting out high up gets the light into more oncoming drivers' eyes.
• I'm pretty sure these are aimed too high from the factory. Other driver's will sometimes flash brights at the vehicle's low beam headlights. It's great for the driver, until the oncoming car hits you.
Smaller, lower cars don't seem to have the same issues.
People like to have a heavy vehicle so that they feel less at risk in a crash with other people who like to have heavy vehicles for the same reason, recursively.
The base cases are more mysterious.
[citation needed]
1. There are rows of SUVs parked at most residential intersections. This way I can actually see what's going on at the intersection, and if I can safely enter it.
2. Less headlight-in-eyes issues.
3. More storage capacity in the trunk. Yay! I don't live in Madrid or London; I can't just stop by the nice little corner store on my way home and get fresh produce. I have to do trips to Costco and haul back a supply. This makes a big difference.
4. More room for fitting the kid's car seat in the back. Since car seats in close proximity to a driver's seat are dangerous (if they should impact during an, uh, impact), this is safer.
5. Better stability in our regional weather.
That's why I switched. Please be so kind as not to eat the serpent's tail: I don't care that if fewer people bought SUVs 1 and 2 would be irrelevant. I care that they -do- buy SUVs and this is my safety-oriented response to that reality.
So as people try to increase their safety in vehicle it becomes a feedback loop until the roads cannot be expanded further.
Meanwhile lower drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and everyone living within a few miles of busy roads suffers from blinding headlights, more deadly impacts, and increased pollution; respectively.
Glad we're all in this together!
another (possibly more legitimate) reason is that many speed bumps seem to be calibrated for large vehicles with lots of suspension travel. the speed bumps at the grocery store I go to are incredibly jarring in my car, feels like I am bottoming out the suspension even under 5mph. in a big truck, this is not a problem.
-You're sitting significantly higher than most traffic, giving you a much better idea of what is going on around you.
-Mirrors tend to be very large by car standards, further enhancing your awareness.
-Large wheel arches tend to allow a smaller turn radius, making them surprisingly simple to drive.
-While riding tall, they are often both relatively short and narrow, further easing your life in traffic.
-Oh, and winters.
Anecdata - my Land Cruiser is shorter and narrower than my wife's VW Passat, has more than twice the trunk space and just over half the turn radius.
The penalty paid is the fuel consumption; when Toyota found out how thirsty the engine was, they shrugged and designed a larger fuel tank.
This also comes with a higher center of gravity which makes it more difficult to control the vehicle during emergency situations
> -Mirrors tend to be very large by car standards, further enhancing your awareness.
Larger vehicles tend to have bigger blindspots (even with properly adjusted mirrors)
> While riding tall, they are often both relatively short and narrow, further easing your life in traffic.
But you still have a higher center of gravity and worse vehicle handling as a result. Trying to swerve around something or make an emergency lane change makes it more likely you'll lose control of the vehicle
> Oh, and winters.
This is more a factor of the type of tires used and how many wheels are driven. My all-wheel drive vehicles do very well in the winters when equipped with snow tires.
> Anecdata - my Land Cruiser is shorter and narrower than my wife's VW Passat, has more than twice the trunk space and just over half the turn radius.
How would your Land Cruiser do in the moose test versus the VW Passat?
This is the video[1] of a Toyota Hilux during that test. And this is a video[2] of a VW Passat. Note that the first video was done while the driver was going 37 mph. The second was at 45 mph.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoHbn8-ROiQ
[2] https://www.motor1.com/news/388271/euro-spec-vw-passat-moose...
That being said - yes, the narrower track and somewhat higher CoG does make the LC handle less well than the Passat at speed, however this disadvantage is largely negated by the local conditions - I live in a (very) rural area where the posted limit is mostly 20 or 30mph.
Blind zones are definitely much smaller in the LC - side mirrors are almost three times larger and placed farther from the vehicle body; the rear window is more than 50% larger and, crucially, more than a foot closer to the rearview mirror than in the Passat, greatly improving the view.
I agree tire quality and wheels driven affect handling very much (obviously!) - part of the (local) problem being that when it snows, it really snows, and with very few people living on this island, every snowfall is effectively a DoS attack on the roads. When there are 6-8" deep ruts while waiting for a plough to eventually arrive, 15" ground clearance beats 6" ground clearance every time.
As for moose, luckily we don't have anything larger than deer, but if we did, I'd rather be in the Passat driving under the moose rather than in the LC getting it in the face, no doubt.
Again - I did not intend to leave the impression a Humvee was the only choice which made any sense -rather that 4x4s have properties which make them sensible choices to some people in some locations.
But if you look at the biggest pickups from the 80s they're not really that big. The whole compact and subcompact truck market has vanished. People only want 'em big.
Meanwhile, there are people who think driving with high beams on is safer (I had an Uber, or was it Lyft?, driver who thought so, and I left him a bad review because of it and his unwillingness to turn them off for me). Inspections won't help in that case -- only law enforcement (fines) can. But I'm not sure how much effort police put into that sort of traffic violation, or if it even is a traffic violation (if not, it should be). I'm guessing it's just so much easier to give tickets for failure to stop, or for speeding, than for any of the rest of the annoying and dangerous habits drivers have.
Another thing to do is PSAs. Educate the public.
> none of the high intensity portion of the light shall, at a distance of 25 feet ahead of the vehicle, project higher than five inches below the level of the center of the lamp from which it comes, or higher than 42 inches above the level on which the vehicle stands at a distance of 75 feet ahead of the vehicle.
The 75 foot regulation is the only one that gives an absolute height, and is irrelevant for a car directly behind me at a red light. Five inches below the center of the lamp at 25 feet means that a high truck will illuminate the entirety of my rear-view mirror, because those trucks are more than 5 inches taller than my car.
Obviously cops could pull over and ticket people with terrible headlights, and sometimes they do (I've actually been pulled over for "failing to dim" in Colorado. My low beams were inoperable and I was roadtripping and so had to reach somewhere to camp). But in general there doesn't seem to be an enforcement will, even against patently ridiculous colors (blue, purple, yellow, pink, etc) that are quickly distinguishable as non-DOT-conforming.
You would think pulling people over based on headlight color would be even easier than having to look at a radar gun, but apparently not. Maybe the problem is there's no alert to make cops look up from their phones.
This is all possible, and actually I would love to build something like this for the police so that I can stop people from blinding me while I'm driving.
FMVSS 108 doesn't directly define a permissible color for headlamps. It references some SAE documents that define it, but you have to pay money in order to access them.
Headlamps can have a range of permissible color output (e.g., halogen vs HID vs LED), and, apparently, bulb manufacturers like Sylvania manufacture halogen bulbs with a blue filter that apparently complies with FMVSS 108 even though they have a bluish color.
Just because there are asshats driving around blinding everyone I don't think it's a reasonable response to go back to a situation where people whose cars were manufactured with shitty halogen headlights have no recourse except buy a new car.
Apparently Porsche is proud of this awful design?? https://www.porsche.com/usa/aboutporsche/christophorusmagazi...
Purely passive, but if they're close enough for it to reflect their glare back at them, it'll do so with devastating accuracy.
Yosemite Sam "BACK OFF" decoration optional.
I don't think this is the solution.
I replaced the weak halogens with LEDs that have an adequate cutoff pattern. I made sure to test it so it wasn't blinding oncoming traffic, but I doubt most drivers are even aware of the concept of headlight cutoff patterns, much less are aware they're adjustable.
The reason people buy bright LEDs is because the headlights that come in their car suck. If you want people to stop blinding other drivers, make projector headlights mandatory, and start incentivizing automakers to provide LEDs as an upgrade.
It's also very common, and very fallacious to think that a cutoff is the be-all, end-all of a good beam pattern and headlamp performance.
The reason people buy "bright" LEDs is they fail to realize that improving headlamp performance doesn't mean throwing random aftermarket parts at the headlamp.
The art of car diagnostics has been lost upon the younger generation. Cars come equipped with long-life halogen bulbs; a mere glance at the bulb you pull out a new car will clue you into that fact, because the bulb will have "LL" (long life) or "L+" (life plus) or "L" (life) printed on it. Long life bulbs trade off luminance and brightness for life. The logical upgrade would be getting a bulb that performs the opposite tradeoff--not throwing questionable aftermarket parts at the car and then, without any knowledge or testing equipment, self-certifying that the car still meets federal safety standards.
I get that it's totally impractical to roll out because of the huge number of existing vehicles that would need modification, but it's a fun thought. I don't really know enough about polarization to know if it'd even work?
When I have a SUV behind my regular utilitarian, I'm fully blinded. The higher headlights reflect directly both into the rear and side mirrors.
The strength is also overshadowing my own headlights (I see the shadow of my car in front of me).
When a new car is going in the opposite direction, I'm never fully sure if the driver just forgot the high-headlights or not.
One tip which you probably know already but not everyone does: you can darken your rear view mirror by flipping the tab on the bottom. Unfortunately no equivalent for your side mirrors.
I bought my car used a while ago, and it's now ~10 years old. I find the stock headlights to be perfectly adequate to drive in rural areas (and I live/drive regularly rural streets without street lights).
The difference with newer cars though is _staggering_. It's not only SUVs.
Of course, if you drive a truck or are towing a trailer, that's a different story.
Ironically, this gets harder and harder in some newer cars. My driver's side mirror reaches its limit precisely as my car (a 2018 Outback) side disappears from the view. It's unfortunate how much flexibility we've lost with these mirrors.
Bright headlights are a problem that's so far below all sorts of misdemeanors with victims that routinely go un-investigated that I don't understand how someone can suggest with a straight face that they deserve that level of law enforcement resources. If you don't want to see a particular product exist then go after the sources.
Edit: I guess you probably meant "manually report" rather than "build a system that automatically reports" which is far more reasonable. For anyone who thinks we should be automating this sort of thing the above response stands though.
("Oh god. This guy sounds just like... oh. It is dsfyu404ed." - me, often enough to have noticed this is a thing, reading the comments here on articles about cars.)
Right, that's exactly the response we don't even give to all sorts of crime with a victim unless the victim is very pushy about getting a police report filed. If we're not going to at least make some token effort to enforce petty theft and vandalism laws then I see no value to society of making a point of giving that level of enforcement to even lesser crimes.
I cannot imagine how anyone with minimal understanding how the world workd could suggest that is a "petty" concern.
But in the US, you'd be wasting your time, if not making a joke out of yourself.
Luminosity is a term best left for astronomers and not people who deal with automotive lighting.
Luminosity has units of Joules/second and is the measure of all the electromagnetic radiation emitted by something. This is obviously more relevant to something like, the Sun, which emits significant amounts of not only IR radiation but also visible light and UV radiation.
Luminosity has 0 relevance to automotive lighting because last time I checked, the human eye is unable to perceive IR radiation. We don't drive at night with the aid of IR radiation.
Unfortunately, this simple fact has been lost on the people who attempt to sound smart when pushing their latest and greatest illegal HIDs/LEDs and projector retrofit kits.
Also: since the listings on the marketplaces for these lamps do not match legal requirements, why are they not shut down and the sellers prosecuted?
Varies by state.
Even for a 20 year old car, you will be told stuff like "you need to replace the front left wheel bearing and the tie rod bushing, both rear springs, and that ABS sensor which is not working". You'll even get a fail if you show up without wiper fluid (since then they can't verify that your wipers are working correctly). They most definitely check your lights thoroughly.
Around here, just having the test done is almost $100. Then there is the (potential) garage bill or DIY work+parts to fix whatever didn't pass, and then $20 for the re-test to fix whatever was necessary. If you don't do it, you lose your plates and insurance coverage.
But usually the people who run aftermarket lights take the required 1 hour to put the stock ones back in before the test.
I once got a car checked out, and the mechanics noticed that one of the brake cylinders couldn't be bled when they replaced the fluids. When I got it back, there was almost no brake pressure and the report had a note lightly recommending that I get the cylinder replaced at my convenience.
You would be amazed at how averse people are to maintaining their cars in the States. Even the dealerships will avoid telling you about problems because they assume most people would prefer to run things into the ground rather than maintain them. It's pervasive.
I assume there are not enough law enforcement resources to enforce all the relevant laws.
In New York, where I live, inspections are done by private mechanics (with a state license). There's a posted inspection standard (https://dmv.ny.gov/brochure/new-york-state-vehicle-safetyemi...). Lights must be "of an approved type," but I'm not sure how you can reliably check this in a shop.
Also, some mechanics are more stringent than others. Some are outright shady. New York sets a flat $37 fee for inspections, paid to the mechanic. The fee is low, so there's an awful incentive here to look for high-margin items that "need" to be repaired to pass the inspection. Brakes and windshield wipers are some of those items. A set of aftermarket light fixtures -- if they can even be identified -- not so much. (This is anecdotal, but I've experienced this type of inspection on more than one occasion.)
Other states, like New Jersey, do inspections solely at state-owned inspection facilities.
Regarding sales, it's not illegal to manufacture off-spec fixtures. It's illegal to have them on your car on a public road.
Intentionally blinding problem drivers, while emotionally satisfying, is likely to cause accidents, road rage, and is probably illegal. Blinking your high beams is the socially acceptable thing to do. Going too far beyond that is the optical version of coal rolling.
Intentionally escalating a situation on the road while making it clear you are doing it out of malice rather than genuine stupidity is never the right thing to do.
Sure you can probably get away with it for awhile but you're eventually gonna do it to a cop that makes it very much not worth your while or you're gonna run across someone who's reaction causes you serious bodily harm. It's just not worth it and normalizing that kind of tit for tat behavior makes the world a worse place.
Personally, when I see people beaming me on the other side of the road in a rural area, and I'm sure it isn't just overly-bright factory lights, I flip my high beams on and leave them on until they turn theirs off. I see way too many people on rural roads driving around with their brights on because they just don't care about other drivers, and prefer to leave them on. This isn't such an issue in cities.
I've really gotten to the point where I absolutely hate driving at night, especially in rural places or highways.
All of these are not my concern.
Being able to see is.
My concern is to mitigate this danger.
Unofficially it's to supernova those select few who don't know how blinding their lights are.
I have keratoconus. I'm legal to drive at night but I try to avoid it at all costs. LED lamsp create massive visual artifacts. They're much worse than conventional headlights. When they're brighter they create larger artifacts.
There are a limited selection of aftermarket lights available. I bought LED replacements and aimed them as well as I could. They're about 3ft above the ground (stock height) so there's not much I can do about them shining into other cars. It's the height that makes them bad. If they had positioned them lower it would be much better.
Presumably you know this already but think it's ok because it's unlikely that you will end up in an accident as a result.
https://www.jwspeaker.com/products/categories/headlights/
I hope you chose something from one of the aforementioned companies. The aftermarket clones are just that...poor-quality clones.
Anyway, being able to see wet pavement and puddles is almost irrelevant. Wet road surfaces are good specular surfaces, which means that light from your headlights is bounced away from the car. Dry road surfaces, on the other hand, scatter light in every direction, and as a result, dry roads appear to be better lit than wet roads. However, simple physics dictates that the amount of light hitting a road surface doesn't change just because someone poured a few gallons of water onto the road. The amount of light hitting the road surface is a property intrinsic to the headlamp.
And really, there's way too much emphasis placed on how bright a wet road appears to a driver. Last time I checked, most obstacles (deer, pedestrians, disabled vehicles) were above the road even when the road is wet. The amount of light that is reflected off something above a wet road wouldn't change much whether the road is soaking wet or bone dry. And it's the light that is reflected off an obstacle that's important in perceiving those obstacles (well, that, and the contrast of the obstacle).
I believe that it is an instant fail if you have aftermarket LED lights if the vehicle was fitted with halogen originally. Does not stop you just switching out the bulbs for the tests, but it is certainly will at least catch those who are unaware.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-headlights-and-windshields-p...
The ambulances now have brake lights mounted near the top/rear of the vehicle that are at least as bright as headlights whenever the brakes are applied.
Police lights are so bright, even trying to avoid looking at them at night causes temporary blindness.
Of course, forbidding tall-mounted headlights would make SUVs a bit more undesirable.
Another year, I took my car in for a brake fluid change and state inspection. They failed the inspection because the rear brake rotors were below the minimum thickness. I replaced the rotors and pads and took it back in. They passed it and put the sticker on.
On the way home, I get the low brake fluid warning light and find that one of the front calipers was leaking brake fluid. So I had to replace the caliper as well.
Essentially, they'll fail inspection even if it's not a real safety issue (blinking parking brake indicator light), but miss actual safety issues (leaking caliper during a brake fluid change service).
One things I've heard people say, and which I would agree with, is that one of the reasons to keep your engine bay clean isn't for it to look pretty, but so that problems (esp. leaking fluid or oil) are more obvious. On older cars with dirty engine bays or undersides, it's a lot harder to see some problems because of all the grime. I have no idea if that was an issue with your car, but I can see it being a problem with a lot of inspected cars.
That's a very good point. But, in my case, I would counter it with the fact that the car had a brake fluid change performed and that they inspected the braking system as part of the inspection process (hence how they determined the rear rotors would not pass inspection).
An essential part of a brake system inspection is to check if there are any leaks by examining the brake fluid reservoir, master cylinder, brake lines, and calipers. I would understand if they missed a power steering fluid leak or a coolant leak since they weren't directly dealing with those systems as part of the service I paid them for, but they should have definitely spotted that leak before giving me the keys.
This kind of thing is why I never like letting other people do car work for me, and try to do everything myself. You just can't trust mechanics in this country to be honest and competent.
1: The very first thing the inspecting mechanic does is remove your tag. If they find a fault, they get first dibs on selling you the repair. (yes, you can get a temporary pass) The VA inspection fee, at least through the early 2000s, was minimal. I always assumed that shops did the inspection as a loss-leader, with the profit on the needed repairs.
2: I suspect that if they are found to be passing cars that should not, there is government/administrative hell to pay.
(Also, after leaving Virginia, it blew my mind that other states didn't inspect. It is nice to know that every car on the road has at least one brake with enough brake-pad left to come to a halt.)
Our headlights are both objectively and subjectively terrible compared to, say, European standards, and the manufacturers are helpless to improve their products. I'd go so far as to say the US DOT has significant blood on its hands.
Fist, beam pattern, housing alignment, and lens clarity are important. If you throw HIDs or LEDs into a reflector housing designed for halogens, you'll end up casting a bunch of light upward, high enough to be useless for long-distance road visibility at highway speeds at night. Yeah, you'll see those reflective highway signs lighting right up all right, at a distance way too far for you to even read what's on them. And if your headlamp lenses are dirty or hazed over, you could have the luminous output of the sun in each housing, and you'll still only get a slight improvement in visibility for all the diffusion the lenses are causing. You would be amazed just how much visibility you can get by cleaning & polishing your headlight lenses and making sure they that are properly aligned and putting out the correct beam pattern, all while leaving the light emitting devices themselves unchanged.
Second, the color temperature of these aftermarket kits often ranges from sub-ideal to outright wrong when considering the purpose of nighttime visibility. Most of the aftermarket kits I've seen on the road have had a very high color temperature -- very very blue, or sometimes outright purplish. Someone might think their car looks very stylish with such a headlight color, but they are actually working against how their night vision works. By my reading, the human eye is most responsive to light in the blue band for brightness perception. So, by that logic, it would make sense to turn the color temperature up, right? Well, only up to a point. Naturally, light is more bluish during the daytime. And outside during the daytime, one's pupils end up quite constricted, so not to overwhelm one's eyes. And so when someone drives around with headlights at 5000k, 6000k, 7000k, with all this bright blue light right there in the foreground in front of the car, they're actually killing their night vision, and their peripheral vision, especially. Everything in the path of the headlights might seem nice and bright, but anything outside of the center of the beam is going to be a lot harder to see than if they were running a much lower color temperature at equal brightness. And finally, in inclement weather, like fog or snow, all that bright blue light is more liable to get reflected back at one, blinding one. IMO, 5000k and up is too high of a color temperature. 3000-4000k is ideal.
I personally would love to start seeing more enforcement of the existing laws on the books regarding headlight beam patterns. Because if there isn't, then it seems likely to me that there will be new laws passed that make it harder to get any aftermarket retrofit kits or do any DIY retrofits, period, even if one's retrofit were otherwise completely compliant with the existing rule as to beam patterns et. al. I really hope that those who are being irresponsible with aftermarket LED headlights don't end up ruining things for those of us who are able and willing to do the research and take the time to do a headlight upgrade correctly, such that it is safe, legal, and actually useful.