Wednesday, Jan 22, 2014 at 13:09
Traditionally there where three beam widths on
driving lights.
Spot or "pencil beam".
medium or "driving"
and
"Fog" or wide beam.
These beam widths carry over from the sealed beam days and relate to standard beam widths on "PAR lamps", they have more or less carried over thru the halogen age and int the HIDs.....LED is a bit fuzzy.
Fog is more or less explanitory, and where also used in motorsport as cornering lights.
Pencil beams are realy narrow and throw a hell of a long way down the road.
Medium is generally most usefull for driving.
Of course there is variation from light to light and brand to brand.
Now here is the truth lots of people don't want to hear.
A great many people are obsessed with very
bright driving lights that shine a very long way down the road. This is neither wise nor helpfull for a number of reasons.
1. dright
driving lights cause what I call low beam blindness. So consider you are driving along with very
bright long range
driving lights......an opposing vehicle comes along and dips their lights very early because you lights are
bright...SO you eyes are adapted to the relativly
bright lights, now you are down to low beam and your vision is very much effected.....not only that but because of the distance the opposing driver dipped at you are spending a very long time on low beam.
2. Narrow
bright beams cause tunnel vision. They give the impression that you are seeing very
well, but in fact you are only seeeing what is in the beam of your narrow lights and much of everything else in in deep shadow.
3. very
bright and in particular narrow lights, punch very hard,...and they come back at you real hard too.....so you are doing some range work, where the road is twisty...you need your lights but they punch back at you so very hard off every bank and guard rail that they become more liability than help.
Then you have all these large very
bright reflectorised signs the road authorities like now.
A very
bright very narrow light will pick these up at quite some distance a punch a nearly blinding light right back at ya.
Combine all of the above and there are a lot of people out there not seeing anywhere near as
well as they should.
for decades it has been very common to run one driving or medium light and one pencil beam or long range light.
I ran this combination on several cars over a 20 pluss year period....in my younger years I did a hell of a lot of night driving.....and thaught it gave a good result...and it very much gives the apperance of that.
that was untill a pair of lights came my way on a deal I could not refuse...both in a medium or driving pattern.
I am finding I see better with this combination and see where I need it better than I have in the past.
I have now converted both my vehicles to this arrangement.
What we need to see
well, is a good smooth pattern of light that extends
well up to arround 200 - 300meters, it needs to extend out onto the roadsides, and needs to be not massivly brigher than your low beam lights.
Light beyond the 300 meters is far less helpfull than many would like to believe.
My recommendation is to make sure your low beam headlights are working as
well as they can.....in that the lamps are getting adequate voltage and above all they are correctly aimed.
Then purchase a good quality ( not necessarily expensive) driving or medium pattern pair of drving lights and have them mounted, aimed and wired
well.
Hope this helps.
cheers
AnswerID:
524925