Yeah there are laws regarding the max lumens allowed. Every state has them, and there are federal standards as well ( Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 108)
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https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2004-title49-vol5/xml/CFR-2004-title49-vol5-sec571-108.xml
For the article you mentioned…Reading now, thank you!
In general, asking a cop about the law isn’t something you should rely on to make sure you’re not breaking the law. If cops knew the law that well they’d be lawyers and make a lot more money.
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Ignorance of the law is no excuse…Unless you’re a cop.
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What you should do is what I have done, accept the fact that you should not drive at night. I confine my night driving to about a 2 mile radius of my house on very well light streets.
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Maybe it depends where you are and what the question is. While in college and renting an apartment, a roommate was ticketed in the parking lot for having out of state plates. He went to the town police station and explained that he was a student, and they told him to pay the fine. He was advised by a few others to contact the Pennsylvania State Police. The local barrack’s response was “those guys again? Give us an hour and then contact them again.” When he called the local police station again, they asked for his plate number, state, and name so that they wouldn’t bother him again.
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@jtsanders
It also depends on the officer.
I can ask two different officers the same question and get different answers.
For example, “did you check your oil after the oil pressure gauge went to zero?”
answer 1 “Why would I?”
answer 2 “Huh?”
Cars with reflector headlights should not use hid retro kits. A halogen projector style has better cutoff so it might work ok with hid. As in less blinding light issues.
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My son’s 2005 Ford focus had LEDs in its factory projector style headlights and actually looked classy from the front. They were aimed appropriately at the road and I never felt any more blinded by them than by halogen bulbs. The color spread was a lot more white and crystal clear. My 2009 Odyssey has projector low beams and reflector high beams/daytime running lights, so I’m not sure what a daytime running LED would act like,but I’d never use the brights with oncoming traffic anyway. I’d still rather find someone who has already done it to the same vehicle as me so I can look up pics or a review…
It does. Not all states are quite so severe about plate switching. California, it seems, wanted to curb car theft, and decided that since a lot of car thieves swap plates, a 2nd felony charge for stealing cars would up the deterrence factor.
The guy I know swapped plates because he’s an idiot who had 2 cars and only wanted to register one of them, so he’d switch plates when he used his second car. He never stole a car, but got snared by the anti-car-theft measures nonetheless.
It actually really made me mad, because the car he had to surrender was a CRX with a rare Japan-spec B-17 motor swap that I had offered to buy from him only a couple of weeks before. My CRX needed a new engine and I’d have loved to have put that one in.
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You didn’t go to the police auction?
They didn’t auction it. They crushed it. The body was rotted out so they probably figured it wasn’t worth fooling with. Plus, I’m more than 1,000 miles away so that would have been a bit of a chore.
Does your state require an inspection of your vehicle on a routine basis?
What you’re proposing is unethical, but the more I get blinded by other drivers, the less and less I care.
As long as you can find someone else to do the driving at night, that’s what’s best for everyone, but I won’t judge you for doing what you’re contemplating. As long as the law isn’t doing anything about it, you might as well benefit from the behavior rather than suffer from it.
There might come a day when you regret doing it, and you’d have to live with that, and possibly face a fine, so you might want to look into the risks more first, which can vary depending on where you live and the kind of terrain you drive on.
Don’t almost all new lenses (except tinted) come with an anti-glare coating? It’s one of the cheaper options people almost always get.
No inspections here, and if the police don’t care…Bottom line is I’m going to try this upgrade, but I’m keeping my halogens in the glove box in case I realize it’s a mistake.
It’s optional. I have it. It does nothing at night. My astigmatism is what kills me when headlights are coming at me.
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They always ask me if I want that option.
You got free legal advice from a law enforcement officer, not paid expert legal advice from a lawyer. If the former is mistaken, you lose.
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Me too, and if you try to decline it, a good optician will try to talk you into it because it is so important to have. If you ever compared lenses with and without it, you wouldn’t consider it optional ever again.
At your behest, I checked out the reviews.
My overall impression of the reviews is that they are overwhelmingly positive, and most of the negative reviews lack useful information.