- Phillips and Sylvania make some LED units for use in cars that would be street legal in certain cars.
It would be more accurate to say Philips and Sylvania make
some LED retrofit bulbs that perform adequately to reasonably well in
some lights on
some cars.
- LEDs often don't throw light in the right directions for the housing, reflector, and lens design, which is part of why they're problematic. Any LED replacement should be visually evaluated against a standard incandescent from multiple angles, under varied lighting conditions, and from multiple distances.
That's right. You're putting in a fundamentally different kind of light source than the lamp was designed for, so adequate function can't be assumed.
- There are no regulations explicitly barring the use of LED lights. Rather, the issue is that most LED "bulbs" do not meet the minimum standards required for use on public roads.
It's actually that most of them cause the lamp they're installed in to no longer perform in a manner that is safe and complies with the regulations for whatever kind of lamp it is (a brake light, a turn signal, etc).
Without buying a whole bunch of LED "bulbs," how can I figure out what product is reasonably likely to be a decent, safe replacement for my current lamps?
Well, step one is to stick to Osram/Sylvania or Philips product, which cuts way down on the number of candidates. Pare it down even further by ignoring those brands' product lines that don't work well in pretty much any lamps (the non-Zevo Sylvanias and the Philips Ultinons), and now the list of ones to try is pretty small -- might even be zero items long, if there doesn't happen to be a potentially good one in the size and/or color you need for a particular application.
Should I be looking for something that sends light straight out the lens, into the reflector, or both?
That depends on what lamp on what car you're working with. Some kinds of lamps require light straight out the front of the bulb, and others don't. Some kinds of lamps require a lot of rearward light, and others need more sideways light. With a standard filament bulb emitting about the same amount of light in all directions, it doesn't matter; whichever direction of light a given lamp uses, there's light there -- there's also light in other directions not used by the lamp, but used in other lamps that take the same bulb. Because LED bulbs don't (yet) have that kind of uniform spherical (all-directions) output, that's why you have to pick carefully and test it out.
So, start by saying what lamps on what car you're trying to change to LED.
Although I understand that the interpretation of regulations and locals laws falls largely to individual officers (and eventually to a judge who's very unlikely to want to read excerpts from NHTSA regs), what information can I look for when purchasing a light to make it as likely as possible that my vehicles's lights will be viewed as "legal?"
That's pretty easy. You want to avoid getting in a situation where you have to try to convince an officer, a judge or a magistrate of anything. So practically speaking, that means don't go with anything that draws attention to itself by looking nonstandard at a generic level. Something that looks like a brake light, for example -- a big enough area of even-enough, bright-enough light, clearly brighter than the tail light, and of an appropriate color of red -- passes this practical test, and it's unlikely you would get stopped and told that your particular model of car never came with LEDs. Something that looks like it's not a brake light -- too small, too dim, too uneven, too orange, too pink, not different enough in brightness to the tail light -- is like having a megaphone and hollering "ATTENTION LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS: I HAVE MODIFIED MY CAR'S SAFETY EQUIPMENT, SO STOP AND EYEBALL IT!".
I'm not looking for my car to stand out or be fancy
You're most of the way along the right road, then.
There is definitely no under lighting on my mid-2000s Honda
We're getting oh-so-close...what year, model, and body style of Honda?
I just want lights that won't burn out and are reasonably equivalent in safety and legality to my current incandescent bulbs.
Reasonable. You might or might not be able to have what you want; if not, take it in good stride. Shrug, put in the best available conventional bulbs, and keep watching and waiting.
I bought these LED 7443 bulbs, foolishly assuming that it a parts store wouldn't recommend an unsafe or illegal part and knowing that Sylvania is a decent brand. I subsequently installed one and immediately noticed that (1) it was outputting light in the wrong directions, (2) it was difficult to see from directly behind the vehicle compared to the incandescent lamp on the car's other side, and (3) --upon closer inspection-- it was marked "for off-road use only" on the packaging. To add insult to injury, Advance Auto Parts won't accept a return on it because "electronics can't be returned" and "the package is open." I guess that's on me, though, because I didn't read the whole blister pack before I bought it.
Amazon's a good place to buy stuff like this, because of their very generous return policy. That "Off-road use only" thing is a crock. It doesn't actually mean anything. It offers exactly zero legal shield to the maker of a regulated item that doesn't comply with the regs, and it offers no exemption from any legal requirements. It will be very interesting to see what happens if and when Sylvania or Philips gets sued because bulbs they very clearly and obviously designed, intended, and marketed for installation in vehicle safety lights (despite the cutesy and meaningless "off road use only" labelling) caused a crash with property damage, death, and/or severe injury. I'm not a lawyer, but the situation just seems tailored perfectly for a class-action lawsuit that could dwarf
this one.
But does that mean that the
Sylvania Zevo, recommended in another thread, is just as bad?
The plain Sylvania ones are their lower-priced line of Cracker Jack prize toys. The Zevo bulbs actually work creditably in some lamps. But you have to make sure you're getting the up-to-date ones. The first Zevo bulbs in the 7440/7443 size looked like the ones you linked, with a "crown" of emitters under a clear plastic dome. They're junk. The late-production ones look the same as the Zevo bulbs in the 1156/7 and 3156/7 sizes: an all-metal frame shaped like a
Y in side profile view, with a pair of rear-firing emitters on the undersides of the Y-arms, like
this. There's still a lot of the earlier/junk design on the market, and I don't even see the current-design red ones available on Amazon.