• boonhet
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    4 hours ago

    LEDs legally have to be self-adjustable at least in EU. Your mandatory inspection will usually catch it if that system doesn’t work.

    The bigger problem is people throwing LEDs in halogen housings. It’s not the LED’s fault. The other big problem in the US at least I reckon, is having vehicles that are way too tall, so their headlights, while hopefully dipped properly, are above a normal driver’s eye level.

    • ondra5
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      3 hours ago

      Not really, I have factory LED headlights on my 2023 Toyota Yaris and those are manually adjusted the same way halogen headlights used to be. Mind you I don’t have the LED matrix technology.

      When it comes to people throwing LEDs in halogen housing, it doesn’t have to be bad. I used to use a pair of OSRAM LEDs instead of halogens in my Citroen Berlingo 2006, but those were homologated for road use with the same lumen rating as homologated halogens. They were not cheap, but the light pattern was the same as with halogens and they blinded oncoming traffic a lot less than halogens (I tested that with my friends and colleagues). Of course using cheap illegal LEDs in halogen housing is a bad idea, but you can’t throw illegal solutions in one bag with legal and sensible solutions.

      P.S. I live in the EU

      • boonhet
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        3 hours ago

        Interesting. I couldn’t legally drive a car with high output headlights without it having both automatic adjustment and headlamp washers. It’s simply mandatory

        Maybe you mean that it’s manually adjustable in addition to having auto-leveling? I think that’s the case for nearly all cars. Or maybe your car manages to stay below some sort of light output limit despite having LEDs.

        • ondra5
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          3 hours ago

          What you’re talking about aren’t LED headlamps, these regulations (auto-leveling and washers) are mandatory for xenon headlights. LEDs don’t fall in the same category as xenon headlamps. What is interesting is that halogens have maximum allowed lumen rating which is a lot lower than what xenon headlamps can have and LEDs can have even more.

          • boonhet
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            2 hours ago

            So it’s based on the lumens and it’s hard to make HIDs that don’t exceed the limit, but easier with LEDs. I just assumed that your LEDs were bright.