I just wondered why their is no legislation here in the UK regarding the amount of light that cars dipped beam and main beams can give out?
There is. Vehicles in the U.K. are required to have headlamps conforming to ECE
Regulation 112 (for halogen lamps),
Regulation 99 (for Xenon lamps), or
Regulation 5 (for European-code sealed-beam lamps, almost never seen). These regulations define and specify all aspects of headlamp construction and performance including minimum and maximum allowable levels of light at specified test points within the dip and main beams. The old British-standard sealed beams, which are more or less an American sealed beam but for left-hand traffic, are still permitted, but are almost absent from the road. You only see them on vintage vehicles and some older taxicabs and lorries; the UK adopted the ECE headlamp specs in 1973 or '74.
At the moment I believe there is just legislation on the power rating the bulbs have to be. I believe it is 55w for dipped beam and maybe 100 for main beam? Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
Yep, that's not correct. Bulbs fitted to any vehicle first put in service on UK roads since 1 April 1986 must be compliant with ECE
Regulation 37 (in the case of filament lamps) or
Regulation 99 (in the case of Xenon lamps), which stipulate the power (wattage) and output (lumens) for each permitted bulb type. There is no blanket wattage limit such as you have in mind; maximum allowable power consumption varies by bulb type and nominal design voltage (6 vs. 12 vs. 24), but in no case are 100w bulbs permitted. ECE R37 is
here.
The trouble is that people have been modifying their cars with new xenon and led lights instead
Well, as you know, "HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps (any kit, any headlamp, any vehicle) do not work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. See
here (especially the embedded YouTube movie, which speaks specifically to the UK situation). A vehicle fitted with an "HID kit" or with "LED bulbs" in the brake lamps, indicators, etc., would fail MoT.
also many manufacturers have been producing cars with these types of lights factory fitted.
Yes, and...? They're allowed as long as they conform to the applicable regulations.
Nearly all of them are far too bright and much brighter than the standard 55w dipped beam even though they are at or below 55w of power.
Assuming proper aim, many HID headlamps produce less glare to oncoming traffic than many halogen headlamps, and headlamps with low-beam light sources producing an objective luminous flux of 2000 lumens or more can be fitted only in conjunction with an automatic levelling system and a lens-washing system. Practically speaking, this means all HID lamps have to have self-levelling and lens washing. These anti-glare measures are not required with most halogen lamps.
What amount of lumens do you recon the standard 55w bulbs would give out
Between about 1000 and 1900, depending on bulb type.
and what rating of lumens do you think it would be about right to not go above for dipped beam and main beam lights on cars in the UK?
It doesn't work this way. The way to control headlamp glare is at the headlamp (beam pattern specs, aim specs, automatic levelling, etc.). Any given headlamp optic is designed to work with only one kind of bulb; fitting an overwattage variant of that kind of bulb will naturally increase glare, and fitting an "HID kit" will destroy the beam focus and formation entirely. But declaring a limit on luminous flux of bulbs used in low beams would serve no good or useful purpose.
Do xenons and led lighting from cars on the road dazzle and nearly blind you as well or is it just me that has a problem with it?
Well, the output spectrum from HID and white LEDs is quite different to that from a glowing filament. Specifically, the output from white LEDs and from HIDs contains a great deal of blue light. Some people are more sensitive than others to blue light, just as some people are more sensitive than others to photometric glare. It's a real condition, not imaginary, and it's neither weird nor rare; a substantial proportion of people are blue-sensitive, glare-sensitive, or both. So dismissive responses like "if you're blinded by headlamps you shouldn't be driving" are neither helpful nor realistic. What to do about it? Well, if you're blue-sensitive, you might look into some night-driving spectactles that'll attenuate the blue. You have to be very careful shopping for these, though, because most commercially-advertised ones block far too much light. You may have to have them specially made. D. Stern described his own night-driving glasses in pretty good detail in
a Usenet post some years ago; I had a pair made in accord with that description -- bought a used
K2 camera lens filter, took that to my optician and said "This color, please" -- and I like them quite a bit. They cut the glare from HID headlamps very noticeably without interfering with my ability to see. (one thing
not to do about it is move to North America, where all headlamps are considerably more glaring than those in use in the UK. The North American beam specs allow a lot more glare, no self-levelling or lens-cleaning requirement exists, and the notion of a meaningful periodic vehicle inspection is all but a distant memory.)
One of my other grips is people driving with their fog lights on when there's no fog, or the fog is above ground level and not reducing visibility at ground level. I'm baffled why people put them on but they can still see cars miles in front and behind.
Yup, that's a problem everywhere. People treat their fog lights as play toys or fashion accessories. Many fog lamps are more glaring than headlamps, no matter the aim angle, because they use comparably-intense light sources but with much smaller optics. That makes the surface luminance higher, which is a fancy way of saying they appear brighter and are more likely to cause glare. And then there are the tossers who drive around all the time with their rear fogs blazing! That latter problem is being worked on; the latest revision of ECE
Regulation 48 (installation and hookup of lights and signals) calls for the rear fog to switch off automatically when the headlamps or vehicle ignition is switched off
and stay off until manually reactivated by the driver. I haven't looked lately to see if any similar requirement is to be phased in for front fogs, but it certainly should be.
