headlights

grassy said
Dan,

You should check a little more

Respectfully, no sir. I know (a lot) more than you do on this subject. I eat, sleep, drink, breathe, and smoke vehicle technical regulations, especially lighting-related ones. It's part of what I do all day, every day; If I were to get my facts wrong and something incorrect were to make it into print in the automotive lighting industry's technical journal (I am the Global Editor), I would quickly lose my ability to afford to do neat things like eat food and sleep under a roof. If I were to get my facts wrong and incorporate those incorrect facts into regulatory text proposals in the US, Canadian, or international regulatory development conferences, or into assessments of regulatory petitions in those same forums, I would look like a dumbass -- and I hate looking like a dumbass, so I go to great length to avoid it. I am not going to say I am always right about vehicular lighting, but I usually am.

In August 1996, Lucas merged with the American Varity Corporation to form LucasVarity plc".

True. And irrelevant, because that's not who currently produces the Lucas-branded line of replacement car lights. There's also Lucas engine oil additives (not related), and a whole whackload of other "Lucas" brands in the automotive industry.

"Get the Cool Blue HID Xenon look with cool running long lasting Solid State LED replacement DRLs.

Yes, I am (all too keenly) aware that the Chinese will make and the Americans will market anything they think they can make a buck on. Please keep in mind that your car's exterior lights are not toys or fashion accessories, they are safety devices. "LED bulbs" do not work safely or effectively. "HID kits", likewise, do not work safely or effectively.

I didn't see any caveat that this was for off road use only.

It's easy to misunderstand and think that because something is available on a store shelf, it's OK to use. Walk into any Canadian Tire and go to the lighting section; there's all kinds of illegal lighting equipment on display for immediate sale. "Off-road use only" is a legally meaningless phrase. It is a sort of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" vendors and marketers use when they are selling noncompliant (i.e., illegal) vehicle equipment. Fact is, the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and their Canadian equivalents, the Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, work on the principle that if a regulated item of motor vehicle equipment is physically capable of being installed on a motor vehicle originally certified as conforming to FMVSS (or CMVSS), then that equipment itself must conform as well. The marketer's or vendor's stated intent for the equipment is irrelevant ("Oh, yeah, I know these lights would fit an '86-'91 Oldsmobile, but we're selling them for off-road, agricultural, and industrial equipment" does not fly). Headlight bulbs are regulated. Headlights are regulated. So are daytime running lights, turn signals, parking lights, brake lights, reversing lights, side marker lights and reflectors, and every other item of vehicular lighting equipment except non-headlight bulbs (brake light bulbs, turn signal bulbs, fog light bulbs, etc.). BUT, that's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, because the FMVSS/CMVSS regulatory structure also says that it is illegal to render inoperative any regulated vehicle item, system, or design feature. "Render inoperative", in turn, is defined not just as disabling something so that it no longer functions, but also altering its performance in a way that makes it noncompliant with the applicable technical regulations. And that is the reason why "LED bulbs" and such are illegal.

Moreover, the principle of Federal preëmption applies: where state (provincial) vehicle equipment code is contrary to the analogous national regulation (FMVSS in USA, CMVSS in Canada), the Federal code holds sway. This is a sensible structural rule; if we didn't have it, a vehicle maker would have to certify each vehicle (or component) to the requirements of every individual US state and every individual Canadian province or territory. That's how it worked before 1968, and the only reason it wasn't more of a nightmare than it was is because there was very little diversity of lighting equipment at the time.

It's not reasonable to expect more than the handful of us who deal with this stuff every day to have a thorough understanding of it. The North American regulations are poorly organized, and they are far from centralized; to get the entire text and context it takes an enormous number of sources/locations. Nobody likes it that way, but that's the way it is. If you pick up one particular bit of it, it's easy to misunderstand what it says because it lacks context.

I will focus on the "illegality" of HIDs..and I can say that ours HIDs are nothing short of amazing

Amazingly dangerous. You cannot make a good headlamp by just spraying random amounts of light on the road. It just plain isn't safe, no matter how much you think you like them. The human visual system is a lousy judge of its own performance; it's easy to create the feeling that our ability to see is much better or much poorer than it actually is. Subjective impressions of headlamp performance, like yours, are almost invariably way out of step with the objective safety performance of the lamps -- even when those subjective impressions come from highly trained experts; the difference is the experts know their impressions are not reliably indicative of the lamps' actual safety performance.

I could be wrong

You are.

when I passed safety with these mechanics, I knew I was OK

Nope. You're not OK, you're just approved. That doesn't make your lights safe (for that matter, it doesn't make your vehicle safe; it just means you paid your inspection fee -- you should see the rolling wrecks in Ontario!)

Most provinces and states have lax or nonexistent vehicle inspections, of which most do not include any but a cursory glance at the lights (if that) to see if they go on and off. That's changing, largely in response to the proliferation of "HID kits" and used vehicles imported from Japan. Go get your hands on a copy of the BC vehicle lighting inspection manual, if you're interested to see what's gradually working its way across Canada. I'm very familiar with that manual; I wrote it for the province.

Look at it another way: You have the option to be:

-Legal but not safe
-Safe but not legal
-Both safe and legal
-Neither safe nor legal

A case can be made for (1) and (2), but (3) is obviously best, don't you agree?

nothing in our safety inspectation literature that would make HID light bulbs illegal.

Nobody sais HID lights are illegal. What's illegal (and dangerous) is installing HID bulbs in headlamps not designed for them.

There are standards on what a candela is and what a Lumen is but amazingly there is no accepted international standard on how to measure that in an automotive application

Um...no. I have no idea what you started with to get this bizarre statement. Measurement of lumens and candela and such from automotive lighting devices and light sources is utterly standardized and has been for many decades.

I'm about done; I'm not real keen to carry on a pissing match with you. You are severely outgunned in knowledge and qualification on this question, but y'know what they say about leading a horse to water (or a horticulture). You're probably going to carry on believing your illegal HID headlamps are amazingly great, and continue to draw incorrect conclusions from what you think you understand of what you think you see, and I can't stop you. All I can do is post tons of info showing you to be wrong so that others will not labour under your same misunderstandings.