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      03-06-2013, 07:30 AM   #41
Grovsnus
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Drives: Le Mans blue X1 35i
Join Date: Sep 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ddark13 View Post
the xenons depend more on where you live. if you're in an area w/o street lights, i'd highly recommend them.
Counter-intuitively, I'd say it's the other way around.
When you drive outside city light pollution, your eyes adjust quite remarkably to the dark. Then comes someone with cold xenon lights and blinds you for 30 seconds without even using the high beams. Also, when alone on a dark road you have a much harder time seeing anything outside your cone of light.
Hard xenon lights are good for twilight and light polluted areas, because they win the war with all the ambient light sources. But for dark roads with very few cars, a much warmer incandescent with a bigger spread works better. There's nothing it needs to be brighter than - it just needs to illuminate as much as possible without blinding you or decreasing your night vision.

A Citroen with yellow headlights is the best car I've had for night time driving outside cities and their surroundings. Not because the lights were super-bright, but because they weren't.
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