Originally Posted by KrisZ
Thanks Deontologist for a well written post.
I do find the general acceptance of aftermarket LED retrofit bulbs as acceptable or even an upgrade from factory halogens quite puzzling. Especially since the HID retrofit kits are generally accepted as being bad.
It's quite a puzzling phenomenon.
There are several reasons:
1) The main reason is money. There is literally millions to be made off unsuspecting consumers in search of "upgrades." HID kits were a huge business back in the early 2000s. People illegally imported HID kits from China and sold them at insane markups. The NHTSA busted 20+ companies doing such activities, but it is a game of whack-a-mole. Now, the fad is LED kits, and the NHTSA has been sleeping at the wheel for the last decade or so. There hasn't been any real enforcement activity going on, and as a result, you and me can easily buy federally illegal HID (and LED) kits off Amazon.
https://one.nhtsa.gov/About-NHTSA/P...legal-Lighting-Crackdown-Continues.print
We now have brain-dead websites such as Bulbfacts.com advertising "scientific" testing of LED retrofit kits. The truth is that the guy running Bulbfacts.com has no idea what he's doing, and he admitted as much himself.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?453228-are-these-test-results-worth-anything
The reason he keeps running his site despite being shown that his testing is useless (as well as admitting to as much) is money. He uses Amazon affiliate links. Whenever someone sees his testing and buys one of his recommended products, he gets $$$.
2) OEM headlamp setups suck. There's plenty of blame to go around here. It's not just unsuspecting consumers being misled and buying dumb stuff. OEM headlamps range anywhere from mediocre to excellent. Chevy Tahoes and their stablemates are HUGE sellers and they had some of the worst lamps on the market for many years. Throw in aging and yellowing of the lamps from sun exposure, and you get even worse headlamps.
3) OEMs don't aim their headlamps properly. 50% of new cars roll out the factory with random headlamp aim. Not even Toyota--the master at making consistently high-quality cars--will aim the headlamps on its new cars consistently (much less correctly). This creates highly variable headlamp performance among "identical" cars. What you might think is a case of a cheap, nasty headlamp might just be instead a misaimed headlamp. Aim is by far the most important determinant in how far a headlamp illuminates at night. Even if you have extraordinarily high-powered headlamps, they won't illuminate anything if they're pointed too far downward. Page 3 illustrates the random aiming of lamps at the factory:
https://www.iihs.org/media/714fb5d9...rrent/headlight_test_rating_protocol.pdf
4) OEMs use cheap, long-life halogen bulbs to reduce warranty claims. Many people like to claim that their "headlamps suck." The "halogen bulbs suck." The reality is that yes, the halogen bulbs used by OEMs suck. They are long-life bulbs--they are designed to last as long as possible so people don't go running back to the dealer after 1 year of ownership. The average American is not mechanically inclined and will more than likely complain at the dealer about a burnt out headlamp bulb on a new car under warranty. Long-life bulbs are designed to hit the minimum legal standard for light output. Most halogen bulbs are by law required to emit a certain nominal number of lumens, plus or minus 15%. These long-life bulbs are targeted to emit in the lower part of that range, so 85-90% of the nominal number of lumens. Add in aging as the bulb is used, and the number of lumens emitted drops even more. Add in dendritic growth on the filament due to the halogen cycle, and the beam focus deteriorates, making the lamp appear even worse. It's not uncommon for OEM halogen bulbs to last 7-8 years in cars, and of course output is going to be complete crap. And people will judge their lamps based on the old, tired halogen bulb inside it instead of thinking "what if I replace the old, worn out bulb with a fresh, high-performance bulb?" People love to jump to "what if I replace the crappy halogen bulb with a high-tech LED or HID bulb??"
I have a 1999 Toyota Sienna, and its original, made in Japan, Koito branded halogen bulbs are still fully functional in 2019. Car has 160k miles on it, so it wasn't parked in a garage and forgotten about. And it has always-on daytime running lamps which cannot be disabled. So these bulbs have been on for every second of the 160k miles put on the car. And yet they still work. The bulbs are obviously severely degraded due to such long-term service, but they still turn on (unfortunately). Many people will think: wow, what a reliable car, not even the bulbs break. That is a double-edged sword. Yes, the bulbs still "work," but very poorly at that. Nighttime visibility is severely hampered. Even the cheapest, nastiest parts store replacement bulb would put out way more light than the 20 year old bulbs, and there are high-performance upgrades available too.
Quote
I know that at night it is usually LED headlights that I notice are bothering my eyes. I don't know if it's the color, the glare or a combination of those plus some other factors. But I know I didn't have that problem just few years ago, before the hole LED fad took off.
Higher-color temperature lights have been proven to bother older drivers at night, and yet there's a push toward higher-color temperatures because "that's what's looks cool."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10985991_Why_HID_headlights_bother_older_drivers
The funny thing is that all the new, high-color temperature lamps coming out could perform even better if they just stuck with a warmer, halogen-like temperature. But automakers are forgoing raw visibility performance for "what looks cool."
Quote
Another pointer that something isn't right with the LED systems is that IIHS started testing them and rating some of these OEM implementations very poorly. They didn't really do that prior to LEDs becoming popular.
So why do the LEDs get a free pass it seems?
OEM LED implementations are generally excellent, but OEMs still don't give two (censored) about proper aim. The IIHS itself says most of the tested vehicles would do just fine if someone at the factory aimed them properly. Unfortunately, no one seems to care at the factory. If headlights had been aimed properly, twice as many headlights could have been labeled as acceptable or good.
Note that OEM LED implementations do not at all resemble any sort of aftermarket LED kit. OEM LEDs are far, far, far, far more sophisticated, reliable, and better-performing.
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2018/wp29gre/Headlamp_Light_Performance_evaluation.pdf
It's such a BS issue because if you think about it: all ball joints are consistently torqued down to spec at the factory--every factory, any factory. That's why you don't hear of ball joints failing on 2 or 3 year old cars: they were assembled correctly and not randomly torqued down until some union guy felt it was "tight enough." But headlamps--also critical safety equipment, are aimed any which way at the factory.
Thanks Deontologist for a well written post.
I do find the general acceptance of aftermarket LED retrofit bulbs as acceptable or even an upgrade from factory halogens quite puzzling. Especially since the HID retrofit kits are generally accepted as being bad.
It's quite a puzzling phenomenon.
There are several reasons:
1) The main reason is money. There is literally millions to be made off unsuspecting consumers in search of "upgrades." HID kits were a huge business back in the early 2000s. People illegally imported HID kits from China and sold them at insane markups. The NHTSA busted 20+ companies doing such activities, but it is a game of whack-a-mole. Now, the fad is LED kits, and the NHTSA has been sleeping at the wheel for the last decade or so. There hasn't been any real enforcement activity going on, and as a result, you and me can easily buy federally illegal HID (and LED) kits off Amazon.
https://one.nhtsa.gov/About-NHTSA/P...legal-Lighting-Crackdown-Continues.print
We now have brain-dead websites such as Bulbfacts.com advertising "scientific" testing of LED retrofit kits. The truth is that the guy running Bulbfacts.com has no idea what he's doing, and he admitted as much himself.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?453228-are-these-test-results-worth-anything
The reason he keeps running his site despite being shown that his testing is useless (as well as admitting to as much) is money. He uses Amazon affiliate links. Whenever someone sees his testing and buys one of his recommended products, he gets $$$.
2) OEM headlamp setups suck. There's plenty of blame to go around here. It's not just unsuspecting consumers being misled and buying dumb stuff. OEM headlamps range anywhere from mediocre to excellent. Chevy Tahoes and their stablemates are HUGE sellers and they had some of the worst lamps on the market for many years. Throw in aging and yellowing of the lamps from sun exposure, and you get even worse headlamps.
3) OEMs don't aim their headlamps properly. 50% of new cars roll out the factory with random headlamp aim. Not even Toyota--the master at making consistently high-quality cars--will aim the headlamps on its new cars consistently (much less correctly). This creates highly variable headlamp performance among "identical" cars. What you might think is a case of a cheap, nasty headlamp might just be instead a misaimed headlamp. Aim is by far the most important determinant in how far a headlamp illuminates at night. Even if you have extraordinarily high-powered headlamps, they won't illuminate anything if they're pointed too far downward. Page 3 illustrates the random aiming of lamps at the factory:
https://www.iihs.org/media/714fb5d9...rrent/headlight_test_rating_protocol.pdf
4) OEMs use cheap, long-life halogen bulbs to reduce warranty claims. Many people like to claim that their "headlamps suck." The "halogen bulbs suck." The reality is that yes, the halogen bulbs used by OEMs suck. They are long-life bulbs--they are designed to last as long as possible so people don't go running back to the dealer after 1 year of ownership. The average American is not mechanically inclined and will more than likely complain at the dealer about a burnt out headlamp bulb on a new car under warranty. Long-life bulbs are designed to hit the minimum legal standard for light output. Most halogen bulbs are by law required to emit a certain nominal number of lumens, plus or minus 15%. These long-life bulbs are targeted to emit in the lower part of that range, so 85-90% of the nominal number of lumens. Add in aging as the bulb is used, and the number of lumens emitted drops even more. Add in dendritic growth on the filament due to the halogen cycle, and the beam focus deteriorates, making the lamp appear even worse. It's not uncommon for OEM halogen bulbs to last 7-8 years in cars, and of course output is going to be complete crap. And people will judge their lamps based on the old, tired halogen bulb inside it instead of thinking "what if I replace the old, worn out bulb with a fresh, high-performance bulb?" People love to jump to "what if I replace the crappy halogen bulb with a high-tech LED or HID bulb??"
I have a 1999 Toyota Sienna, and its original, made in Japan, Koito branded halogen bulbs are still fully functional in 2019. Car has 160k miles on it, so it wasn't parked in a garage and forgotten about. And it has always-on daytime running lamps which cannot be disabled. So these bulbs have been on for every second of the 160k miles put on the car. And yet they still work. The bulbs are obviously severely degraded due to such long-term service, but they still turn on (unfortunately). Many people will think: wow, what a reliable car, not even the bulbs break. That is a double-edged sword. Yes, the bulbs still "work," but very poorly at that. Nighttime visibility is severely hampered. Even the cheapest, nastiest parts store replacement bulb would put out way more light than the 20 year old bulbs, and there are high-performance upgrades available too.
Quote
I know that at night it is usually LED headlights that I notice are bothering my eyes. I don't know if it's the color, the glare or a combination of those plus some other factors. But I know I didn't have that problem just few years ago, before the hole LED fad took off.
Higher-color temperature lights have been proven to bother older drivers at night, and yet there's a push toward higher-color temperatures because "that's what's looks cool."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10985991_Why_HID_headlights_bother_older_drivers
The funny thing is that all the new, high-color temperature lamps coming out could perform even better if they just stuck with a warmer, halogen-like temperature. But automakers are forgoing raw visibility performance for "what looks cool."
Quote
Another pointer that something isn't right with the LED systems is that IIHS started testing them and rating some of these OEM implementations very poorly. They didn't really do that prior to LEDs becoming popular.
So why do the LEDs get a free pass it seems?
OEM LED implementations are generally excellent, but OEMs still don't give two (censored) about proper aim. The IIHS itself says most of the tested vehicles would do just fine if someone at the factory aimed them properly. Unfortunately, no one seems to care at the factory. If headlights had been aimed properly, twice as many headlights could have been labeled as acceptable or good.
Note that OEM LED implementations do not at all resemble any sort of aftermarket LED kit. OEM LEDs are far, far, far, far more sophisticated, reliable, and better-performing.
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2018/wp29gre/Headlamp_Light_Performance_evaluation.pdf
It's such a BS issue because if you think about it: all ball joints are consistently torqued down to spec at the factory--every factory, any factory. That's why you don't hear of ball joints failing on 2 or 3 year old cars: they were assembled correctly and not randomly torqued down until some union guy felt it was "tight enough." But headlamps--also critical safety equipment, are aimed any which way at the factory.
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