In the last few years, car headlights seem to be much worse with glare. I don’t know if people no longer turn down their high beams, or if it’s raised trucks or aftermarket bulbs, or just shitty car design but it’s getting much tougher to see at night. And my teens complain more, so it’s not just me getting old
I’m looking for a way to improve my nighttime safety without adding to the problem.
Does anyone have experience with aftermarket LED bulbs for fog lights? Are they enough brighter to help see the road in the glare of oncoming high beams, while being enough lower to not just blind other drivers?
If it isn’t foggy you shouldn’t be using fog lights. This is part of the issue, a lot of people use them in conditions that aren’t foggy and they blind oncoming road users because they don’t have a pattern of light that is designed to be angled away from the opposite side of the road, they instead flood the road with light. This can be helpful in fog but shouldn’t be used in not foggy conditions, and definitely not to try and out light other peoples lights.
Granted the other half of the problem is the absurdly bright lights they put in vehicle headlights these days as well but you would be better off getting some glasses with some lenses that take that glare away so as to be able to drive around in a safer manner rather than trying to have brighter lights than the other person, you are just perpetuating the problem doing that.
Fog lights have a flat beam. They don’t need to shy away from the oncoming side because they should never be aimed anywhere near eyes. They’re 2ft off the ground and should be aimed a few degrees down. If a fog light is blinding, it’s either aimed wrong or it’s not a fog light. Could either be some shitty flood/high/driving beam assembly mounted low or the driver swapped in a PnP bulb, destroying the beam pattern