When vehicles and stupidity mix ....

[SemiMan]

Driving home from the airport last night, barrelling up behind me was a vehicle with obviously illegal HID retrofits, quickly lighting up the interior of my car ... blinding me with lights reflecting off the rear-view mirror, even with the auto-dim, my rear-view mirror becoming useless.

As the vehicle gets closer I notice that the marker lights on either side of the headlights (barely visible in the glare), were a pretty blue color ... of course the vehicle, being kind, was adorned with fake neon lights under the body (only one side, other likely broken).

The vehicle passes the car beside me, goes around, then actually signals to go back into middle lane.

The turn signals .... bright and blue.

Yes, morons can drive. This proves it.


Semiman

 

[N8N]

The lighting may be moronic but the signal use means that the operator was at least more clueful than your average NoVA/DC area driver...

 

[Monocrom]

He actually used a turn signal? Wish we had those types of morons in NYC.

 

[mcnair55]

You should have [Rule 11 violation removed by moderator] the pretty red would match the Richard head lights.

 

[MichaelW]

Have we assumed the driver is the owner?

 

[Inspector Dim]

Have we assumed the driver is the owner?

At the risk of going too far off topic, while I do not think the assumption that the driver is the owner should be legally binding (as in photo-enforcement), I do think that if the vehicle's lighting violates the law, the owner AND the driver can be assumed to have made the choice to violate the law. In the case of photo enforcement, we can only assume that the driver at the time of the violation is at fault.

I am surprised at the blue turn signals. In the US Midwest at least, overly bright headlights won't get much attention from the law, but blue turn signals might as well be a blinking sign that says "Hassle me"

 

[StarHalo]

None of that is legal in Cali, any one of those items would be a quick and easy ticket..

 

[Alaric Darconville]

None of that is legal in Cali, any one of those items would be a quick and easy ticket..

Considering FMVSS 108, it's not legal in any state. Eventually, the guy will get stopped. Maybe if someone were just to call the police to report a police impersonator, flashing blue lights everywhere, he'll get stopped sooner. Maybe even charged with impersonating an emergency vehicle, or something.

 

[SemiMan]

Wish I thought of that at the time. Doh!!

 

[sadtimes]

I will glady introduce myself to the driver of any car with these obvious light violations

 

[geoturtle]

I saw one around here, the other night, that had replaced his tail light lenses with amber ones. Stupidity lives in southern Maryland.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

In my state, Washington, only police agencies are allowed blue lights. That stunt could get you into a lot of trouble.

Oh, we (I say "we" because I was a member of one of the car clubs lobbying for it at the time) did pass a "blue dot law," allowing this harmless affectation from the classic days of street rodding and customization. but those don't really throw blue light, they only make brake lights appear a bit purplish.

In general, I'd say blue lights on a car could get you charged with impersonating police, if the cop is ticked off.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

Since we're on vehicles and stupidity:

i have a friend who drives me nuts. He calls for advice, then never listens, often to his detriment (got screwed in his divorce because he asked my wife, who spent 11 years as office manager of a small law firm that did family law, for advice then did the opposite). He decided his old CUCV Blazer needed better lights. I told him that a pair of GE H6054NH Nighthawks and a relayed harness to eliminate voltage drop would be most cost effective for a guy with little money but lots of time and plenty of relays and wire on the shelf. But he was set on "H4."

I told him good H4 lights existed, but Cibie requires a bit of searching and money. I told him I'm a bit underwhelmed by the 200mm Hella H4's on my F250, though I used to think more of them.

So my friend shows up for dinner, right headlight a dim glow suggesting a bad ground (he insisted that was not it), and the left lit up a blue-white, apparently halogen, the headlight having a clear plastic lens and some fluting or "rippling" in the reflector. He proudly proclaimed it was "H4!" but could not even give me a brand name or maker. I saw the light hitting a wall. It's a pretense of the standard European low (or the bulb's filament shield produces that), and there is a bar of light making roughly a 15 degree right hand rise - and a huge black hole to the right of that. The high beam is more of a "scatter" than a pattern.

D*** it, I've known this guy since we went to first grade in 1960. I want to help him. I have even given him good lights on occasion. But some people are set on a self-destructive course. Oh well, rant over...

 

[-Virgil-]

I was a member of one of the car clubs lobbying for it at the time) did pass a "blue dot law," allowing this harmless affectation from the classic days of street rodding and customization. but those don't really throw blue light, they only make brake lights appear a bit purplish.

Yuck. Who says it's "harmless"? Aside from people who know nothing about the subject except they want to put blue dots on their car? What data backs up that "harmless" claim? Answer: none. Stop lights are meant to be red, as specifically defined. Not purple or "purplish". In practice this isn't much of a problem because very few people make this silly modification, but still, it causes an "arrrrgh", because of all the many deficiencies in WA's lighting laws that went unaddressed, and will continue to go unaddressed, because among lawmakers "No, didn't we just deal with some kind of car lighting thing?".

i have a friend who drives me nuts. He calls for advice, then never listens, often to his detriment

Time to start declining to offer advice. He doesn't want advice, he wants affirmation of his dumb, ignorant ideas.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

In practice this isn't much of a problem because very few people make this silly modification...

That's how I look at it. Most today don't even know what they are, and they really only show up on a very few show or hobby cars.



You're right, and my wife has started just either letting him run out of words with no response or cutting him off with something very direct. Free advice is often not freely taken. That's life.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

When he eventually gets pulled over for this, we can only hope to see the dashcam video.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Oh, we (I say "we" because I was a member of one of the car clubs lobbying for it at the time) did pass a "blue dot law," allowing this harmless affectation from the classic days of street rodding and customization. but those don't really throw blue light, they only make brake lights appear a bit purplish.

In those vehicles with single-compartment incorporated turn, stop, and tail lamps , the blue dot also means the tail lamp itself is harder to see. It's not just under braking conditions that the blue dot conversion is problematic.

i have a friend who drives me nuts. He calls for advice, then never listens, often to his detriment

It's tempting to try giving the exact opposite of good advice, hoping he'll reverse it once more and do it right-- but then again, he might actually for once LISTEN and then will be able to say "this is why I don't listen-- you told me bad advice once".

 

[-Virgil-]

It doesn't help that there is such an enormous amount of garbage product on the market. Much of it is marketed as "bling" with no pretense at being anything else (i.e., very few grandma-and-grandpa types trying to see better will buy it).

But there's at least as much dreck being straightfacedly marketed as a seeing 'upgrade'. I hesitate to say "the latest" I've seen, because it surely will go out of date by another "latest" by tomorrow, but here it is: a cheap and nasty 200mm x 142mm headlamp-shaped thing, that looks pretty much like a headlamp if you glance at it quickly or don't know what you're looking at. Glass lens and metal reflector. Sold as an "upgrade" by Delta, with your choice of a variety of blue H4 bulbs, or you can get different-colored HID bulbs or LED bulbs in it, and it comes with or without a city light/turn signal/daytime running light (depending if you specify a white, amber, or blue bulb or LED). Leaving aside the complete fraudulence of just about every main and "city/turn/DRL" bulb option offered, look closer and you'll see the only marking on this thing's lens is a small "HS1" in the corner. The HS1 is a 35/35w version of H4, authorized only on low-speed small motorcycles with tiny charging systems. It has different base tab placement so it's not physically interchangeable with an H4; the dingbat who runs Delta has had its offshore maker install an H4 bulb seat instead of the HS1 bulb seat. There is no other marking on this lamp. It doesn't (and couldn't even come close to) meet any UN/European, US, SAE, or any individual-country regulations. It is literally a headlamp-shaped toy. Beam pattern? No, that term only applies to a distribution of light that's engineered and intentional. About the only vehicle this would be safe or effective on would be those coin-operated kiddy-car rides at the mall, or one of those theme restaurants where there's a sawed-off car front end on the wall with the lights on. And yes, these are marketed to grandma and grandpa who are trying to see better!

("They're H4!")

Then there's a vendor in NY or NJ who has positioned himself as catering to owners of classic cars, many of which take a 7" round headlamp. This dingbat has "reproduced" (i.e., knocked off) the Cibie lamp. Instead of the Cibie logo and name is a cartoonish pictogram of a car. The "E-code" marks on the lens are nonsensical. There's an (E9) which, if it were real, would mean the lamp was homologated by Spain's type approval authority. There's a double-headed arrow ↔ which, if it were applied legitimately, would mean a headlamp capable of being adjusted to produce either a left- or a right-traffic low beam pattern (keep in mind this is a cheap copy of a headlamp designed to produce a right-traffic low beam and a high beam and nothing else). There are other marks that seem to have been chosen at random. This is the second revision of this knockoff junk; the first was a Z-beam copy. Made in India at apallingly low levels of quality, and, here too, not producing anything that could be called a "beam pattern". People buy and drive with these things thinking they've "upgraded" their headlamps, when in fact leaving the original dim sealed beams in place would have been far safer.

("They're H4!")