lessonstar

I have noticed in my area that there are more and more blue headlights on vehicles, there like a LED bulb, extremely bright. Some of them look blue when you meet them head on at night, and some of the setups don't even have a dim its just on/off. Last night I noticed a vehicle with green headlights, it looked like a green traffic light coming down the road. I stopped that pickup and told the driver to lose the bulbs or next time he gets a citation. our state law says you can display a white headlight to the front, and no other color except for amber. so these blue and green lights are illegal.



Anybody else notice this where they work?

Mark Doiron

I saw a Jeep with red headlights the other day. I wish they would be ticketed. I also wish that people replacing OEM headlights with aftermarkets that shine brightly into oncoming driver's eyes would be stopped and warned/ticketed.

Smudgeontheglass

The blue lights are usually from a xenon kit. Lots of people here drop them in factory reflectors and end up blinding everything on the road. As they wear out they get bluer and bluer. They are not legal due to light-cut off as well as the colour temperature of the bulb. Our vehicle safety act says the same thing for colour, only white and amber are allowed on the front. Additionally in Alberta you can have at maximum 2 pairs of headlights on while on the road, a fog lamp tied to your low beam and a driving lamp tied to your high beams. Both must be mounted lower than the headlight centerline. Amber marking lights do no count towards this, but I believe you can have two in the corners, and five high clearance lamps.

Some of the stuff is out-dated though so a 5 cob led POD would count as 5 lights...

resharp001

I'd be surprised that anyone can get away driving with colored lights. That seems like an obvious thing you'd get pulled over for. Improperly adjusted lights are much harder to control. I think a lot of the problem is that people pop the factory housings out and install new ones thinking the alignment will be the same. They don't adjust them and just think "damn, these LEDs are 5000x better!"....when in fact they are blinding everyone else. Admittedly, I have JW Speaker LEDs, but I am overly conscious about em. I error on probably having them aimed a little low if anything. I'm topless most of the time, and my rear is on the light side, so when the hard top does go on it raises the light pattern a tad bit more. LEDs seem to be a bigger issue than just on jeeps though. The contrast with darkness is just so harsh on the eyes in general when coming at you.

mr72

I think there are a few basic things being mixed up here.

1. "blue" halogen bulbs... these have been popular ever since HID and Xenon headlamps started coming out on luxury cars right around 2000. Seems like every 90s Civic I see has these halogen bulbs with literally a blue tint on the bulb glass itself in there. These are dumb and purely cosmetic so the user can think they look like they are driving a 2003 Mercedes instead of their 1996 Civic. BTW I have never seen a JK with these dorky blue halogen bulbs, but I'm sure they exist.

2. the "halo" lights with round colored "halos" around the lights. I have been seeing a lot of these on JKs lately, like the OP, sometimes red, sometimes orange or green or other colors. Strictly illegal, for sure, in every state.

3. 6500K LED headlights (like mine), which are clearly much more "blue" than the stock halogens, but are still "white" technically. These are not tinted they are just white lights that appear bluish when compared with the very yellow/amber stock halogen lights on most cars including JKs. The big difference is that at night, the 6500K LEDs look white, at least in when a halogen headlight is not right next to it. It's like your eyes kind of do an automatic "white balance" and if you are attuned to the yellow-tone lights of ordinary cars then white lights appear "blue".

Mark Doiron

The vehicle I saw had red headlights--they were projecting red light onto the road in front of it. I've also seen green. The blue is common for the reasons that you mention.

mr72

Wow, that's amazing, and disappointing. Maybe it was a Christmas thing? I can't imagine someone intentionally using a red or green tinted headlamp. Beyond dumb.

lessonstar

Yup, the development of car lights is halogen, HID, LED. Colors change from yellow to white and blue as the color temperature increasing

mr72

Except that HID, Xenon and LED, none are actually blue. They are just more white than halogens, which are quite yellow/brown/orange.

The only "blue" headlights are halogen tinted bulbs which are all the rage among the '96 Civic crowd.

GdawgX