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Do aftermarket LED bulbs in fog lights cause glare? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by AA5B@lemmy.world to c/cars@lemmy.world

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In the last few years, car headlights seem to be much worse with glare. I don’t know if people no longer turn down their high beams, or if it’s raised trucks or aftermarket bulbs, or just shitty car design but it’s getting much tougher to see at night. And my teens complain more, so it’s not just me getting old

I’m looking for a way to improve my nighttime safety without adding to the problem.

Does anyone have experience with aftermarket LED bulbs for fog lights? Are they enough brighter to help see the road in the glare of oncoming high beams, while being enough lower to not just blind other drivers?

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[–] Quexotic@infosec.pub 3 points 2 months ago

Aftermarket LED replacement bulbs are generally brighter and have a different physical location for the light source, causing the manufacturer's careful design to fail, resulting in light being aimed higher.

To complicate this, a lot of car mfgrs make it easy to put the bulb on wrong and still have it work, causing both LED aftermarket and regular Halogen bulbs to appear to flicker as they wobble in the fixture. That's one of my favorites!

Newer headlights come from the factory with HID bulbs which "Instead of relying on a heated filament, HID lights create an arc of electricity between two electrodes housed within a bulb filled with Xenon gas and other noble gases. When electricity passes through the gas, it excites the gas molecules, producing an intense and bright light." Which prompts me to ask how a person can safely drive at night with welder's goggles on.

Between aftermarket LED and HID lights being such an issue, I've chosen to wear good darker yellow polarized glasses to protect my eyesight.

I have fog lights on my car and I've opted to keep the original bulbs, because in this case, throwing an LED in there would almost certainly bork up the aiming and could illuminate actual fog in a way that could cause me a level of risk I don't want to have.

For your case, it sounds like you really want the extra light. Id recommend you get some bulbs from Amazon, find a white wall, test the aim, and if it sucks, try to adjust the aim, and if it still sucks, return em and get high intensity halogen bulbs for the fog lights.