headlight brightness

I am seeing some pushback on these very bright white LED front headlights lights. They blind those drivers that are coming toward you (not a good idea). THe real bright ones are banned in Europe and elsewhere. The U.S. has been studying this 'blindness' problem for more than a decade now, but nothing has changed here yet. But with more higher trucks/SUV's, etc, the problem will only get worse. So, I am curious about selecting the best type of high and low beam light bulbs to replace those in my 2005 Yukon.
Any thought about this?

delmaracer said:

I am seeing some pushback on these very bright white LED front headlights lights. They blind those drivers that are coming toward you (not a good idea). THe real bright ones are banned in Europe and elsewhere. The U.S. has been studying this 'blindness' problem for more than a decade now, but nothing has changed here yet. But with more higher trucks/SUV's, etc, the problem will only get worse. So, I am curious about selecting the best type of high and low beam light bulbs to replace those in my 2005 Yukon.
Any thought about this?

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That's going to garner a lot of opinions. In my opinion, after trying various LED bulbs in the stock housings, I went back to plain old Sylvania H13 Basic halogen bulbs on my '07 and '12 Yukons. They're cheap and last a long time. They're bright enough for the driving I do and hassle free.

money wise.. spend it on the nice fog lights, they are low enough not to blind people and still light the way nicely. Diode Dynamics ones

the big deal is a sharp cut off. as long as you have a clean sharp cut off and keep that below on come traffic eyes you're good. problem is you can't get that from led's in the stock reflector. you can buy very expensive ones that have the light output as close as possible to where the bulb will put it. but even then if you had a normal bulb that was 4 times brighter than stock it would still glare at people. but those led's are 200$ and up for a set. no one is willing to pay that.


you need a aftermarket projector build and aimed correctly. it's not cheap, look at searches here and you'll see 1200-1600$ spent on light mods.

I was into my kit 900$ something before I even bought the truck, and then spent another 150$ or so on the bi-led foglight projectors. and even then if you live in a hilly area, going up hill while a car crests the top, he's going to get blinded by anything.

I don't even know what I have in my c6 headlight. I had to replace the lenses in those as well at 200$ each. on top of 6 sets of projectors. 2 lo, 2hi and 2 fogs, plus the install kit. I didn't fab those, they made a nice drop in plate that used the factory adjusters still.

pick your poison at this point. just make sure you don't look into the oncoming annoying lights, look to the side of the road. and keep your dash lights on the lowest settings at night. they ****** your night vision. I've had more than one person tell me how bad the lights in their car were till I convinced them to turn the dash lights down and then amazedly they can actually see past the inside of their car haha.

Glare from oncoming headlights is one of the major reasons I don't drive at night any more. My eyes just don't recover quick enough.

I have several boxes of Sylvania Cool Blue 9005 and 9006 halogen lamps I plan on trying to sell at some point. Put a set in mine after I replaced stock lamp housings with discoballs. Made a lot of difference ... in case I ever drive at night sometime again.

Mean_Green said:

Glare from oncoming headlights is one of the major reasons I don't drive at night any more. My eyes just don't recover quick enough.

I have several boxes of Sylvania Cool Blue 9005 and 9006 halogen lamps I plan on trying to sell at some point. Put a set in mine after I replaced stock lamp housings with discoballs. Made a lot of difference ... in case I ever drive at night sometime again.

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if you do have to drive at night. I found a pair of good quality oakley yellow shooter lenses actually do help, Interstate wise. takes about 15mins for my eyes to adjust but they do take the edge off since while things seem brighter there is actually a % of reduction in there spec wise.


I find on the overnight interstate drives its the semi trucks with the worst lights for glare these days. which doesn't really make since because those guys are over driving their headlights at the speed limit. no way they stop fast enough or avoid what they see at night before hitting it. just sailing off into the night on hopes and dreams haha.

98% of my driving is on narrow, two lane rural roads with no shoulders, steep dropoffs or banks and poor/worn lane markings. You don't have 15 seconds to recover from glare.

Mean_Green said:

98% of my driving is on narrow, two lane rural roads with no shoulders, steep dropoffs or banks and poor/worn lane markings. You don't have 15 seconds to recover from glare.

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this might sound bad and I don't want it to sound like that. but it will help for you to have brighter lights, specifically low fog lamps that won't blind the on coming driver that's blinding you, but the extra light will help you see better even when you have glare. I don't want to say fight fire with fire, but for lack of a better term. I think those diode Dynamics fog lights would help you, just incase you need to drive somewhere one night.

just what I've noticed.