anyone ever get a headlight ticket?
I've always thought the fact that the E codes are illegal in the US was pretty stupid. Since the low beams have such a sharp cutoff, plus they "wedge" into the RIGHT side of the road (read OUT of the eyes of oncoming traffic), they were perfect for the US. Makes no sense.
Yes, there are "E-code" headlamps made for right-side traffic. The US is the only country where they're not allowed. You're right, that's pretty damn dumb, but the US inherited a we're-right-and-the-whole-stupid-rest-of-the-world-is-wrong streak from England (and just look how well that's been workin' out for the Brits lately).
It's not so much a matter of the shape of the cutoff—there are DOT-certified (US-spec) headlamps with that same cutoff shape. What matters more is the light distribution within the beam (
under the cutoff). The rest-of-world spec allows much weaker low beams and much stronger high beams than the US spec, though both standards have room for good lamps.
It's still ridiculous to ban headlamps considered adequate in countries with much better safety stats than the US, including just about every Western European country plus countries with US-type traffic systems (they're allowed in Canada where the roadway geometries, sign placements, etc are virtually identical to US practice).
It's especially ridiculous because despite a mountain of high-quality research, nobody's ever found a real, actual safety difference between US and rest-of-world low beams. And that's what matters, yet wonks and geeks get in decades-long, knock-down-drag-'em-out squabbles over the particulars of picky details in this versus that standard.
Two things explain this:
1. The reason why nobody's ever found a categorical benefit to our headlamps versus their headlamps or vice versa, despite all the theoretical bickering, is because low beams are inherently inadequate for the task we ask of them. US-spec, UN-spec, halogen, Xenon, LED, projector, reflector—all of them. They are not capable of providing the driver with enough preview at night to avoid an obstacle at normal road speeds. Some are more inadequate than others, and some can be made less inadequate, but to one or another degree we all outdrive our low beams. The only reason there's not more blood and twisted metal on the highway about it is because there's enough traffic density that we usually benefit from the extended coverage provided by the lights of the cars in front of us. But when that's not present, inadequate seeing makes the nighttime traffic fatality rate (overwhelmingly pedestrians) way higher than daytime, even with fatigue and impairment factored out. This is why it is such massive regulatory malpractice for NHTSA to have screwed up ADB/Adaptive Driving Beam, which
finally, after a century, unhandcuffs drivers (outside the US) from the inadequacy of low beams without glaring other drivers. This isn't just a playtoy for the wealthy.
2. Automakers are two-faced about this. They whine about having to spend money to design different lights, bumpers, mirrors, seatbelts, etc, but out the other side of their mouth they (very) actively work to maintain the US different-but-not-better regs, because it allows them to keep control of what vehicles do and don't enter the US market, and at what prices.
Adopting the rest-of-world standard would not necessarily make everything peachy; there are about as many shortcomings and flaws in the rest-of-world standard as there are in the US standard, it's just a different mix. It would take a team of perhaps five or ten experts a few months to devise a single standard for every aspect of every light on a vehicle, combining the best and eliminating the worst of both the US and rest-of-world standards. I headed up such an effort for lighting system installation (which lights have to be present, what colour, mounted where, hooked up how) in the SAE group some years ago, and it
exists as a "recommended practice" technical standard. An automaker following this standard could configure a lighting system acceptable throughout the world. As far as I know, nobody has ever used it. The automakers do not (really) want this.
