LED and other headlamp upgrades and new MOT

[Jocko]

it would be nice if the average motorist managed to have TWO working headlights AND that applies to Large commercial vehicles as well. After all that is an easy one to enforce. ie ALL lights fitted MUST be in working order.

Why the police don't set up the occasional early morning "spot check", whereby every vehicle coming down a road gets pulled over and ticketed if it has a headlight out, I don't know? Well I do actually. Lack of funding and officers on the beat.
Police Scotland is in a pickle as it is without them having to deal with motorists and motoring law as well. When VW and others introduced the fog light coming on as a vehicle was turning, Fife Police (as it was then) were told to ignore it, until the legality was tested in court. As far as I know it still has not been tested.

[culzean]

I can remember the time whe

it would be nice if the average motorist managed to have TWO working headlights AND that applies to Large commercial vehicles as well. After all that is an easy one to enforce. ie ALL lights fitted MUST be in working order.

Why the police don't set up the occasional early morning "spot check", whereby every vehicle coming down a road gets pulled over and ticketed if it has a headlight out, I don't know? Well I do actually. Lack of funding and officers on the beat.
Police Scotland is in a pickle as it is without them having to deal with motorists and motoring law as well. When VW and others introduced the fog light coming on as a vehicle was turning, Fife Police (as it was then) were told to ignore it, until the legality was tested in court. As far as I know it still has not been tested.

I can remember a time when police in our area use to have spot checks by pulling vehicles into a layby,  but they were for many things, including lights that were not working rather than lights that were working fine but may have been slightly illegal.   Government departments are the slowest things in the world when it comes to using new technology (they make a snail look like speedy gonzales).  They normally get around to things years or decades after private sector does.

Police are too thin on the ground these days and too much paperwork to worry about vehicle lighting too much and even though some lights are a bit dazzling and people drive around with foglights on all the time I would much rather the Police chased the proper terrorists and criminals than waste our taxpayers money checking vehicle lights that are working,  rather than lights that are not working.

[guest7288]

Do you have a final position on this. Is it sadly correct to say that;

LED bulbs fitted as after market imporovements will not pass the new MOT test from May onwards unless the whole headlamp reflector has been replaced

HID bulbs retro fitted are the same

Is this correct?

[Kenneve]

Surely, whether or not a vehicle headlight passes a MOT depends upon the beam pattern and as Culzean says, on the LED lights that he advocates, (me also)  the beam pattern is identical, so where is the problem? There are certainly some LED lights on the market where this is not so.
Have still not seen anything in the revised regs, that refers to LED bulbs, HID is a totally different matter.

[Jocko]

LED bulbs fitted as after market imporovements will not pass the new MOT test from May onwards unless the whole headlamp reflector has been replaced

LED bulbs fitted without a type approved light unit (in fact all exterior lights fitted with LEDs) are illegal to use on the road and as such SHOULD constitute an MOT fail, if spotted.

[trebor1652]

Perhaps we should go back to sealed beam units and good old Hobsons choice.

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[guest7288]

I think Jocko has got it right, time will tell and no doubt we will find out. It is not clearly written though and I guess it is down to beam pattern and 'if spotted.'

[culzean]

Perhaps we should go back to sealed beam units and good old Hobsons choice.

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Sealed beam units were proper pants, (but better than carbide lamps) and imagine filling the whole reflector space with halogen and xenon gas 

I'll stick with my filament for MOT and LED for driving plan.... aftermarket HID users have been doing this for many years, and single arc pseudo H4 HID in a twin filament reflector are truly WRONG.

Its an arms race,  with so many bright HID, laser and LED lights fitted as standard it is easy for poor Joe with filament lamps to be completely blinded by any oncoming vehicle and unable to see white lines or verge (the more enlightened local councils put continuous white line along edge of road,  which are way more useful at night than centre line).

[Jocko]

We'll soon all be driving round in autonomous cars and won't need headlights. Just warning lamps for pedestrians.

[guest1372]

Just so long as the high brightness bulb people keep their beams low, we'll all get along.  I can see why auto levelling is mandatory on original fitment units, as it's quite frustrating to have a car behind that seems to be flashing you.  I'm certainly using the dipped mirror much more these days. 

The big heatsink is a giveaway, I guess you don't cover that up with the normal rubber boot, but as an MOT tester can't remove or disturb anything I guess some bulbs will not be seen.
--
TG

[culzean]

Just so long as the high brightness bulb people keep their beams low, we'll all get along.  I can see why auto leveling is mandatory on original fitment units, as it's quite frustrating to have a car behind that seems to be flashing you.  I'm certainly using the dipped mirror much more these days. 

The big heatsink is a giveaway, I guess you don't cover that up with the normal rubber boot, but as an MOT tester can't remove or disturb anything I guess some bulbs will not be seen.
--
TG

With or without self leveling (which seems to work very slowly or not at all)  SUV and 4x4 headlights are a problem for drivers of 'normal' height cars (whatever normal height is these days) - one thing about the rear spoiler on the Civic is that it keeps headlights out of your interior rear view mirror under most circumstances except maybe a 4x4 right on your rear bumper.   The very blue light (more than 6000K) of most OEM HID headlamps is a problem for other drivers as the eye scatters blue light creating glare within the eye,  and this gets worse as people get older. Below 6000K the  light  is more like daylight.  The blue light from Bi-Xenon HID gets absorbed and scattered by moisture in the air,  which is why HID are not so good in rain and fog.

Due to the way LED bulbs interface with normal 3 pin bulb female socket they are easy to fit and remove.  The normal vehicle 3 pin 'flying' female socket just fits onto the 3 pin 'plug' (male pins) on  LED power supply cable - so to remove just unplug, take LED bulb out and plug 3 pin socket back onto filament bulb.   So come MOT time literally a 15 minute job to change LED to filament (you can leave power supply cable tied in place ready for refit).

[Hobo]

  So come MOT time literally a 15 minute job to change LED to filament (you can leave power supply cable tied in place ready for refit).

So in realty what you are saying is that in your opinion it is all right to drive round with illegal lights, not talking about beam patterns or brightness just what is road legal or not, there are plenty laws that people do not agree with but that does not make it ok to ignore them.

[guest5079]

Whatever the rights and wrongs are, some motorists just do not know, nor are they bothered about complying with the law. One that makes me wonder is the HGV or whatever they are called these days with all his twinkling little lights all over the front. Many are blue. I believe this is still an offence as all lights facing forward must be white. ( here we go, with the exception of indicators) I don't know where the yellow headlight stands on this one.
As to LED Headlights, I have no idea why some bureaucrat decided they were illegal. It appears that they are an answer to decent lighting to see and be seen and providing the manufacturer makes the blessed things so that they work properly WHY are they illegal? HID I can understand but even then there are plenty of motorists around with 100 w bulbs in their headlights. As always I expect poor old plod is expected to deal but has no equipment to do so. A classic one is tread depth. I don't think it's changed. There was NO approved tyre tread depth gauge approved and no doubt still the same with the law saying one thing and the only way to get a tyre offence into Court was when it was bald and even then we are onto the 3/4 of it's width must have tread.
Sorry to bang on BUT what happened to the good old VDRS ( Vehicle Defect Rectification Scheme) A car could be checked and one of these would be written up for faults. The driver put it right paid his £10 for a MOT station to confirm it being done. If it wasn't it was straight to Court. Simple not time consuming and got faults fixed because if they didn't bother the Courts gave them some stick.

[valleyjazz]

Been pondering the discussion re different lamps being fitted, surely changing the manufacturers lamps for alternatives is deemed as a modification and as such should be notified to insurers? If not and the worse was to happen could the policy be void?
Hopefully all those who have modified lamps have notified their insurers, there are enough un insured drivers on our roads.
Personally I find these lamps a woftam

[nowster]

One hopes that the next time the legislation is visited the government specifies maximum light intensity (in candela) rather than bulb wattage (which is meaningless with LED and HID).