Q: What is the enforcement protocol for aftermarket lights installed on cars and trucks? Where I live there are numerous vehicles that have swapped out stock headlights with bulbs that are blazingly blinding to oncoming traffic. In European countries, these cars would never last a day on the roads as they take vehicle safety more seriously.
A: Many of us in America have a deep-rooted urge to use our cars as a form of self-expression. I recall watching an episode of a British car enthusiast show, where the host (and this guy is car-obsessed) was genuinely confused about the American predisposition for over-the-top car modifications. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Eighteen-year-old me drove a 1963 Chevy Nova SS with a borderline ridiculous paint job and extra-wide fender flares in back to fit the beefy tires on my custom-painted Cragar five-spoke wheels. Why would you paint your Cragars? I thought it was cool, and I regret selling that car.
Self-expression is part of car culture and, I’d argue American culture. It’s not just the hard-core car crowd. It spans from the driveway mechanic to A-list celebrities. You can cover your Audi R8 in leopard print (looking at you Justin Bieber), paint your Hummer pink and trim it out like a Louis Vuitton bag (Britney Spears) or build a four-engine dragster (Tommy Ivo). Side note: All three of those people are former Mousketeers.
The problem arises when self-expression turns into selfish expression. There’s a reason we have laws about vehicle equipment. Some of the modifications that people want to do can harm other road users. Your extra-bright headlights might make your car look cool in pictures, but if you’re blinding oncoming drivers you’ve moved from self-expression to being unkind, and a hazard.
Same goes for tires that stick out past your fenders. It’s a non-verbal way of telling other drivers you don’t care what happens to their windshield, and even more serious, telling pedestrians you don’t care about throwing a rock at their head. I did a little experiment and typed into Google, “Pickup truck tire size is inversely proportional to . . .” just to see what the autofill would suggest, and it answered, “intelligence.” You thought I was going somewhere else with that, didn’t you?
Getting back to headlight modifications, there’s not a lot about your headlights that you can legally change. Pretty much, if a bulb burns out, you can buy another one just like it. Switching from halogen to HID or LED bulbs is not allowed. Yes, you can buy a conversion kit for your car. No, that doesn’t mean it’s street legal.
Enforcement though, can be tricky. I’m oversimplifying here, but vehicle lighting laws are written at the federal level and adopted by states. If you’ve ever attempted to read the Code of Federal Regulations addressing vehicle lighting, you know it’s long and confusing. It comes in at the same length as Earnest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but unlike Hemmingway, it’s not winning any Pulitzers. Plus, knowing the law doesn’t make you an expert in lighting technology. Even if it did, officers don’t have a headlight testing kit in the trunk of their car.
What I’m getting at here is that traditional enforcement alone isn’t going to solve this problem. A more practical approach might be annual vehicle safety inspections, which some states and many other countries do. Even better would be a cultural shift that continues to value self-expression but rejects selfish expression with our cars. If you want to be kind, you could do worse than to practice it while driving.
What a topic! If Consumer Reports had its way 40 years ago we’d all still be driving around in cars with round removable headlights. Then there are the opposites, people who “upgrade” their headlights today with illegal options.
Back in my youth I installed some Cibie aftermarket round headlights in my car. That’s when I discovered low beams could have their light cut off at low levels with a precise line. But the highs were not good enough for my very rural driving areas, so I installed driving lights with a relay connected to the high beams. They turned night into day.
Fast forward to today, my recent model truck has relatively lousy low beams compared to most other modern vehicles, but the high beams are brighter than the driving lights I installed as a teenager. The reflection back from traffic signs is actually annoying. That doesn’t stop other owners of my truck from wanting to upgrade their high beams.
The US is behind much of the rest of the world when it comes to approved headlight technology. There are better headlight options available in other countries that are not allowed here. It takes time to change laws (apparently longer here than in Europe), and technology is always a step ahead. I can understand the desire of someone who wants to change their headlights for something better, and I bet a lot of people who consider changing their headlights are concerned about the wellbeing of the oncoming driver. But even if a driver upgrades to a headlight of similar brightness, the way that light shines down the roadway will be different. I’m not a lighting expert, so I might not explain this exactly accurately, but part of a headlight design is its alignment. Swap one kind of lamp for another, and the headlight alignment is no longer correct, and now it’s blinding oncoming drivers.
These new lights are blinding and dangerous. They should be outlawed by our state legislature with a heavy fine along with enforcement. They should also be prohibited for selling. Of course people will buy on the internet but at least that makes it more inconvenient.
To whom it may concern I’m tired of buying my stock head light bulbs for my vehicles at 22-27 dollars a bulb before tax so I made a purchase of LED bulbs you say selfish I say I’m not putting out as much a month for stock bulbs! So my comment is kiss off if you think I’m selfish! Honestly I could care less what anyone thinks or says about me! Your more than welcome to fork out your hard earned cash for my stock headlight bulbs if you want!!! But unless your willing to pay my bills you have no right to tell me what I can or can’t do!!!
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that anyone who buys non-original bulbs is selfish. In the article I’m specifically addressing people who intentionally increase the brighness of their headlights without regard for other drivers. While the law doesn’t permit replacing bulbs with a different type, I realize some people are still going to do that. If that’s you, I’d recommend spending some time evaluating how your new bulbs shine – there are standards for how headlights throw their beams so that they provide adequate light for the driver but don’t blind oncoming drivers. There are some online tutorials on how to do headlight alignment, and many auto shops can do it too.