HID Lights? Legal Or Pull Me Over Now?

mrdell123456 · Jan 20, 2010

Well a friend of mine gave me a set of HID head lamp kits for my car. The light kit is the kind that replaces the stock bulbs with a Xenon arch lamp, ballast and ignitor. The color is 6000k white/blue. The kit was a Xmas present and was purchased from carhidkits site, so I do not want to offend my friend by never trying them, but at the same time I do not want to blind others on the road or get a FAT TICKET. What are the penalties if it is not legal? Heck, what is the legality of these light kits? I live in CA if that has any bearing.

trombonedemon · Jan 21, 2010

They should be fine, just aim them lower to the ground, place piece of tape on a wall, mark twenty paces and adjust them w/an allen wrench. Police probaly have better things to do then give tickes for bright lights but, lower them to be sure.

RedDaemon · Jan 21, 2010

mrdell123456 said:
Well a friend of mine gave me a set of HID head lamp kits for my car. The light kit is the kind that replaces the stock bulbs with a Xenon arch lamp, ballast and ignitor. The color is 6000k white/blue. The kit was a Xmas present and was purchased from carhidkits site, so I do not want to offend my friend by never trying them, but at the same time I do not want to blind others on the road or get a FAT TICKET. What are the penalties if it is not legal? Heck, what is the legality of these light kits? I live in CA if that has any bearing.

technically, if there was no trim of the model you own that came from the factory with HIDs, they are illegal. so if you have a 99-04 model, they are technically illegal

if your lights are too bright a cop can pull you over for a roadside inspection. if you dont have a bi-xenon hid kit youre kinda screwed

SjStang00 · Jan 21, 2010

it honestly depends what kind of police officer you run into. I say 90% of the cops around where I live dont care at all. But I do have a story....

Last december (like december of 08) I bought HID's. im pretty sure they were 8 or 10k, brilliant blue. I loved them they made my car stand out so much. One night when I was driving home from work and saw a cop parked in the median. As soon as i drove by he pulled out and followed me and i knew he was goin to pull me over. 5 min later on the side of the road hes tellin me all this BS about HID's and how they're illegal and yada yada yada. He said if he caught me again he would give me a ticket. So i thought to myself alright well i go to school in orlando im never going to see this guy again....

4 or 5 months later during summer im at a local taco bell drive through. i grab my food and pull around to the parking lot. in the adjacent lot there is a cop sitting, no lights, just chillin in the dark. thats common where i live b/c theres always kids at this taco bell. So I hang out with my friends and start up my car and start to leave and this cop starts following me. Im not even on the street 10 seconds and he pulls me over and guess who it is...same exact officer. he even said "you remember me?" gave me a $100 ticket, but if you switch out your lights and show them to the police it reduces to $80.

So it really depends on the cop. I know a bunch of friends who drive around with HID's and dont get pulled over or anything, i guess i was just the lucky one

trombonedemon · Jan 21, 2010

Keep'em low you should be fine!

SaleenGT2001 · Jan 21, 2010

got em on all my vehicles for the past 3 years and NEVER been pulled or had any problems with them. just aim them correctly

281CI96Coupe · Jan 21, 2010

I actually went to the extreme with my situation. Here's the story, I always wanted smoked headlight for my car, so about 3-4yrs ago I bought them and they looked amazing. The only thing that I hated was at night the light output was ridiculously reduced. I bought silver stars and it helped a little, so 2 christmas'es ago, my friend got me a HID kit from a reputable guy online. I put them in and the light output was amazing and gave a really clean look at night. I was very concerned about other drivers because I didn't want to blind them because I hate when they blind me, so I started to do homework on my headlights. I saw people doing these retrofit kits with different type of projectors custom fitted to their headlights. Obviously this was a lot of money and settled on something better. I found a pair of depo headlights with projectors in them that do not look ugly at all.

Long story short, I pulled the smoked lenses off my old headlights and put them on my depo head lamps retaining the look I wanted. And took the glare out of my old setup by using projectors in my headlights

Cliff note: Do not use crazy temps if you want HID's. And if you want to do them right, use a projector headlight or a retrofit kit so the light output is focused.

trombonedemon · Jan 22, 2010

Keepem low!

fast97gt · Feb 5, 2010

i tell its a safety issue, but i live in the foot hills of nc. so dear run rancid round here.

95Vert383AOD · Feb 5, 2010

Ditto on keeping them low.

Also nothing gets you pulled over like a nice blue/ purple light. Get 4300-4500k lights and you wont have an issue with the cops. 4300-4500k is About the temp that most factory HID systems use. Besides....whiter light is brighter than bluer light.

But i digress.....i notice blue headlights alot faster than i notice a bright headlight.

Mustang5L5 · Feb 8, 2010

They are illegal. The only legal HID retrofits are on models in which a car has an HID option and you use the OEM equipment. In otherwords if you had an 06GT and got some OEM HID's from an '08 or '09, you could put them in.

How much trouble you get in depends on the cop you pass and how much your headlight actually glares. Some halogen headlights are terrible with HID's in them (explorer, accord) while others are better. I actually think the 99-04 GT headlight is poor with HID's as i see a lot glaring on the street.

I've met cops that have given tickets for HID lights. To be honest, I think tickets should be given. I've had lifted up trucks with HID 10K headlights and foglights behind me and my entire interior is lit up like a baseball field to the point where i can't see jack because of the reflection in the mirrors.

40oz · Feb 9, 2010

I think the bigger issue isn't legality but whther it's helping or not.

Your standard halogen headlamp is designed to reflect the halogen bulb down the road. HID bulbs are designed for a lens ("projector") to focus the light down the road in a different manner. Unless the HID kit has a bulb that mimics the halogen one, and puts it in the same spot in the housing, it won't match the stock reflector and so the stock reflector won't do the job very well.

The main problem is that you are driving around with a bright-ass bulb in front of a mirror, and it just makes it impossible for the person going the other way to see anything, but really doesn't help you see any better than you did stock. A new halogen bulb isn't exactly dim.

Most HID kits have no provision for dim or bright. So you are either driving around with your brights on all the time or with your dims on. Either way, it doesn't seem like the smartest plan. This place sells a projector housing with a halogen bulb, you can probably buy just the projector housing without the HID kit from them:
Mustang Projector Headlamps + HID Kit

I'm sure there are other places that sell a projector housing for our cars if you look a bit.

Another option is to find a projector housing you can mount either in the grill or in place of the fog lights. That way you get HIDs for lonely highway driving but regular lights for driving around town and avoiding tickets.

Mustang5L5 · Feb 9, 2010

HID's also suck in the rain. I have OEM HID's on my G35 and when it rains i'm blind. Thankfully i have 3K yellow fogs on the car, so i flip those on and can see GREAT!

If you really want to be able to see at night, put 3K lights in. My fog is also my high beam, so when i'm in the dark woods, i can see WAAAY better with my 3K halogen bulbs than i can with my 4300K OEM HID's. Yellow lights just don't look cool

40oz · Feb 9, 2010

Mustang5L5 said:
HID's also suck in the rain. I have OEM HID's on my G35 and when it rains i'm blind. Thankfully i have 3K yellow fogs on the car, so i flip those on and can see GREAT!

If you really want to be able to see at night, put 3K lights in. My fog is also my high beam, so when i'm in the dark woods, i can see WAAAY better with my 3K halogen bulbs than i can with my 4300K OEM HID's. Yellow lights just don't look cool

The advantage of a bluer light is that blue is higher energy so it travels farther. You can see farther down the road, and it looks more like it does in daylight. I don't think HIDs are really designed to be brighter than halogens seeing as there are regulations specifically governing allowable headlight output. The only reason companies like Mercedes starting using HIDs is because they cost more but don't require maintenance. The "cost more" is like leather seats - debateable improvement in function, but no way you'd pay $60K for a luxury car without them.

In my experience, "ricer" hyperwhite headlights can be a lot better than factory halogens if your car comes with crap headlights like a lot of cheaper import economy cars. Mustang headlights are really good as headlights go, so at that point it's personal taste. I've been tempted to get some hyperwhites just because I seem to spend a lot of time night driving on empty two lanes. Anyone who wants to call me a ricer is welcome to because I don't need my car to make me cool. I'd totally rock them if they are actually better. I just haven't needed to replace a bulb yet.

Mustang5L5 · Feb 9, 2010

40oz said:
The advantage of a bluer light is that blue is higher energy so it travels farther. You can see farther down the road, and it looks more like it does in daylight.

Yes, it travels farther, but the human eye cannot see it.

There are twice as many "cones" in your eye that can detect red/green coloration than there are than see blue/violet. Yellow is a combination of red and green so the individual cones that see those colors work together to view yellow light. As you move into blue light, only the blue cones are "seeing" that spectrum.

Basically the eye sees yellow nearly twice as well as blue. So the higher up the blue spectrum you change your lights, the dimmer the actual light is to your eye. It's why those purple 12K HID's are so dim.

But in terms of actual light intensity, an HID bulb puts out way more lumens than a halogen bulb. We see best right around 4300-5000K, so that's why a lot of OEM used that for their bulbs. I beleive Europe uses 5K as their standard. I beleive the sun is actually 5K and is what our eyes have adapted to.

40oz · Feb 10, 2010

Mustang5L5 said:
Yes, it travels farther, but the human eye cannot see it.

There are twice as many "cones" in your eye that can detect red/green coloration than there are than see blue/violet. Yellow is a combination of red and green so the individual cones that see those colors work together to view yellow light. As you move into blue light, only the blue cones are "seeing" that spectrum.

Basically the eye sees yellow nearly twice as well as blue. So the higher up the blue spectrum you change your lights, the dimmer the actual light is to your eye. It's why those purple 12K HID's are so dim.

But in terms of actual light intensity, an HID bulb puts out way more lumens than a halogen bulb. We see best right around 4300-5000K, so that's why a lot of OEM used that for their bulbs. I beleive Europe uses 5K as their standard. I beleive the sun is actually 5K and is what our eyes have adapted to.

Very nice, but the human eye sees blue. Or at least I do. It doesn't matter if I can see yellow "better" than blue if the yellow isn't bright enough to see.

It's pretty clear you are speaking from theory rather than from practice. I've actually tried out different temp bulbs in the past, and it made a big difference going to a bluer light. You can say what you want, it's nonsense that blue light isn't better for night driving. You might prefer yellow light, but that's personal preference, not the result of physics and biology. Nobody but you was suggesting using purple lights. It sounds like a pretty dumb idea to me, but go ahead if you insist.

Standard halogen bulbs are around 3100-3200K, not 4300-5000K. OEM Xenon HID systems are only around 4100K. 4100K is around the same color as aftermarket "hyperwhite" bulbs, not the purple ones but the ones that might look blue if you are slightly off-axis. Silverstar Ultras are 4100K halogens, for example.

Xenon HID is used for multiple reasons, one of which are that it is closer to natural sunlight, being bluer than standard halogen lights. Halogen is bluer than standard incandescent, which is why halogen is used in headlamps.

You'd do well to actually check your facts before posting.

Mustang5L5 · Feb 10, 2010

You can say what you want, it's nonsense that blue light isn't better for night driving.

Lets first clarify what we consider "blue" light here. To me blue is 8K and above.

4000-5000K is not what i would call blue light. I referred to it as "yellow" light but in hindsight that was probably a poor decision on my part and maybe a little miscommunication. This is where (in my opinion based on both theory and experience) the "brightest" light is. So if you are calling 4-5K blue, and i called it "yellow" but we both agreed it was the best...then we agree here.

Now if you are saying these "blue" lights 8K and up are "brighter" at night, then that's nonsense to me. I stand by my presented facts that the eye is designed to operate in same range as natural sunlight...around 4-5K.

You might prefer yellow light, but that's personal preference, not the result of physics and biology.

There is still biological reasons why we can see the color yellow better than the color blue. Why can't you see infrared or ultraviolet? It's not because of personal preference. Why else are the actual colors blue and purple so dark and the colors yellow, green and red brighter? Why can you see a yellow/red/green car coming down the road from farther away than a blue car? I'll skip over the boring eye biology stuff though.

Nobody but you was suggesting using purple lights. It sounds like a pretty dumb idea to me, but go ahead if you insist.

I never insisted anyone run purple lights.

Standard halogen bulbs are around 3100-3200K, not 4300-5000K

That statement was regarding HID bulbs.

Dragstr05 · Feb 10, 2010

Wow I see a flame war coming..

I've had my 6k HID's for a while. Very nice improvement. The high beams havent worked for a while still gotta figure that out, but regardless its been a nice improvement. Probably my favorite is how HID's light up signs. Makes them much easier to see.

My headlights are adjusted to stock specs, and havent been pulled over yet. Hell, I havent been pulled in my state since 2004 and I didnt even own the mustang then

40oz · Feb 10, 2010

Mustang5L5 said:
Lets first clarify what we consider "blue" light here. To me blue is 8K and above.

So if you are calling 4-5K blue, and i called it "yellow" but we both agreed it was the best...then we agree here.

That's cool.

The strange thing is a bulb we tend to see as mostly blue while the light that reflects back is closer to white than bulbs we see as white. But the light from the sun, which we see as yellow when we look at it, is more shifted to the blue spectrum than the appearance of the sun would indicate. Perhaps because of what you talked about - our eyes' response to wavelengths of light. And the ability of a light source to generate the same wavelength spread as the sun.

I'm guessing the reason we have less sensitivity to blue light is because there is more of it and it is more powerful, so we need less sensitivity to pick it up. Whereas there is less red/green light so we need to be more sensitive to it to use it effectively. If we saw into the ultraviolet, we'd probably need even less receptors for that wavelength than we have for blue wavelengths.

007 · Feb 10, 2010

40oz said:
The advantage of a bluer light is that blue is higher energy so it travels farther.

Oh god. What are you talking about? Then why isnt the Sun bright blue!?!?!? What a load of toss! Shorter wavelengths (blue) actually scatter MORE through atmosphere (thus the sky is always BLUE, and the sun goes very RED when it sets and rises). This has nothing at all to do with car headlights!!!!!!!! Nothing occurs in the distances you are talking about.

:OT:

HID Lights? Legal Or Pull Me Over Now?

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