The blue high intensity lights are actually not a hallogen bulb but an HID (high intensity discharge) bulb that uses high voltage to create an arc in the gas inside the bulb to create light. These are very white light and provide very good illumination for the driver. When you look at them they seem to have a bluish tint when compared to regular halogens.

That said, the issue is with how the American market has adopted the use of them. In most parts of Europe HID equipped cars must have auto leveling devices on the lights to ensure that the beam patterns do not blind on comming traffic (say when you go up a small hill and are cresting it). This is not the case in the US and this means that these lights have the effect that has been described in this thread.

Sadly it is a poor implementation of a good idea.

What is even worse are the dumb asses that buy "retrofit" kits for their cars to replace the bulbs that came in there. These kits only give you the HID and NOT the correct reflector for it. What results is a light that spews a lot of brilliant light ALL OVER the place but not on the correct part of the road. The kits claim to be "legal" but they are actually not.

Then you get the real morons that buy blue coated bulbs so that they can get the "HID look". These people take the prize in the darwin scale... the blue tint means that there is a filter on the light blocking most of the usable spectrum. What results is blue light and not white light. The loss of the yellows makes it actually about 50% less bright (though you do not know it just looking at it, but the human eye is less sensitive at that end of the spectrum) when it comes to truly being able to illuminate the road and hazzards on them.

And the final case for morons that need to be shot are the idiots that buy Japanses spec parts for their lights (so that they can retrofit HIDs into some of their import cars). In this case they are doing the right thing by getting the correct reflectors and parts... only one catch, Japan drives on the left hand side and the lights are set up to not blind traffic on the right of them by casting excess light to the left... yup, right into on coming traffic in right hand drive countries!

In any case... that is my 0.02 (maybe 0.05) on this rant.

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