Observing oncomming HIDs in fog & snow.... (archive)

...is something I did today while driving back from the mountains. Just thought this would be a good time to see what the approaching cars appeared as and noted those with really blue HID headlamps (mostly BMWs, Audis, MBs and a few others) as well as those with normal halogen or even the old sealed-beam headlamps (virtually everything else.

In really foggy conditions, the normal headlight's were much easier to see and could be made out at a greater distance. Same in moderate to heavy snowfall. And in both fog and snowfall, the normal headlamps were by far easier to pick out of the grey-blue conditions.

Some of the normal headlamps were more yellow in color and the other normal ones were just plain white. Not a lot of difference between these normal ones.

But the HID headlamps appeared much smaller in diameter than the normal ones. And even though the HID ones put out two to three times as much candlepower (or lumens), the normal ones were easier to see and therefore in my opinion, much safer.

Just an interesting observation I thought I'd share with you folks.

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