It seems as though everyone and their brother has been flashing me at night with my headlights on low beam. Does anyone else have this problem? I usually give them a lil flash back to show my low beams are on. Ive also had people flip me off when I'm behind them with the low's on.

 

Oh yeah. Happens all the time. Once I had my low beams on during the day (it had rained and was cloudy) and this idiot driving a Focus was bothered by them. I was behind him initially and he switched lanes to get behind me just to flash his high beams at me. Hah... it didn't even make me blink.

I bet they feel a little stupid when they realize that our TLs' low beams are just that bright.

 

Yep...happens quite frequently, I actually get some satisfaction out of hitting them back with the high beams...bishes.

 

It's quite normal. Our projector-like HIDs (plus the aggressive front-end) are the killers.


Have you checked You’re not going to believe this one. Cops = dumba$$ before?

 

In 9000 miles of driving my TL, I have never had anyone flash their lights at me. If you are getting a lot of people flashing lights at you, I would check the vertical alignment on your lights. They might be a tad too high.

 

I've had a couple of flashes, mostly when I've got the fogs on. People see two sets of lights & assume 1 is for the brights.

 

Is it our fault people cant afford nicer cars and dont know what normal xenons look like. THat reall angers me. Ive got a friend, and his folks assume anyone with a nice car is a prick, and will look for any excuse to put them down. If you cant afford really nice stuff, alright, its ok, but dont critisize those who can.

 

Pretty helpful response, kiddo.

 

it's not the xenons... it's the combination of HID and projectors.

if the road's a lil bumpy, the headlight will bounce up and down, and should the projectors "focus"on the unlucky oncoming driver, it'll blind him for a second. bmw 7 series' headlights bother me the most in this respect. i know it's their low beams, but i flash them with my high beams anyway. why? just to make myself feel better.. haha.

 

9,000+ miles and have not been flashed, but I can see somebody getting confused if you have the fogs on.

 

I agree. Fogs can make a great difference, especially with the color difference. Where I live we don't get much fog, so I think I've only used those lights once or twice in the last eight months.

 

Thanks. I meant I believe they would go out of there way to use there brights on em, pretty much because they are lookin for a reason to insult them for driving a nice vehicle. From what I understand with our xenons, 2 can play that game

 

^xenon only refers to the gas. HID is what counts.

 

OK. but that is another slang term for HIDs, correct. Xenons.

 

i think people just say xenons because it sounds cool. so yeah, i guess it's become a slang, but HIDs shouldn't be refered to as xenons. i blame the ricers...

some HIDs don't use xenon gas... some regular headlights use xenon-gas bulbs... so it really doesn't make any sense (to me, anyway) to use xenon synonymous as HIDs.

 

Correct. My Maglite flashlight has a xenon bulb in it, but it's obviously not HID.

I get blinked occasionally on one of the roads I drive during my commute (Some of you Bay Area folks may know it: Crow Canyon Road between Castro Valley and San Ramon). There is lots of up and down and winding curves, so there are many situations where I'm cresting a small hill during a right-bending curve and I can see the oncoming driver's face illuminated in my headlights. Even then, I seldom get blinked. I certainly feel sorry for them, though. One night on that very road, a car was coming the other direction and I thought he had his brights on. I gave him a blink and he blinked me back. It was a 3G TL just like mine. Oops!

There was one time where someone in his beater ricer blinked me, so I blinked him back. Then he turned on his high-beams and left them on. So did I. He then swerved at me as we passed. Yeah, buddy, that'll teach me. Cause a head-on. At least I'd be the one walking away from it.

 

haha i just thought about how annoying active headlights, which are HID bi-xenons, would be... just imagine that lil prick behind me, riding my ass, and his bright ass headlights chasing me around the corners. hmm.. i might have to limo tints on the back window...

 

I always try to correct people, or at least clarify to them that they are saying what they are actually trying to say when they use the term xenon. HID is the correct term imho, but even that now has begun to be misused by marketing people... I saw a set the other day at the auto store that actually said HID on the front, but they were just normal filament based bulbs... as most everyone knows with "HIDs" the "D" refers to "discharge" which has always been used to refer to gas discharge lamps, bulbs that have no filament, drastically different physics involved in producing the light... require high starting voltages, and completly different current/voltage charactersitics than a normal bulb.

 

True xenon HIDS like ours are exactly the same technology as in an electronic camera flash except they sustain.

 

Hey! Active Front Lighting is no joke... I've gotten used to it driving this loaner RL. It's pretty awesome, and I bet the TL gets it in the near future.

 

active front lighting? as opposed to active rear lighting? side lighting? lol. oh, im so bored...

 

So if there are diff types of HIDs, and diff types of Xenons, Wouldnt the correct term for ours be XHID, or Xenon HIDs? Caddies used to have incandesent HIDs.

 

Did they really call them that? That's a bit of an oxymoron, IMO. "High-intensity discharge" describes the light-generating process as does "incandescent." Neither is like the other. Perhaps they called them "high-intensity incandescent" or something to that effect.

Light from a HID bulb is generated by discharging a high-voltage through an inert gas, such as xenon. Light from an incandescent bulb comes from passing current through a filament until it heats up enough to be white-hot.

 

Well they were projector based incandesent headlights. GM donated an STS to my school auto shop(I really want to jack it but the VIN is void) and it has projectors, but incandesent bulbs.

 

it's just projector headlights, then. im surprised they don't use halogens. in most cases, projector headlights perform just as well as HIDs... they just aren't as "luxurious" or cool as HID projectors.

 

I've got close to 15k miles and I think I may have been flashed while using the low-beams only once.

Those of you who get flashed a lot, are your cars constantly dirty? I've heard that dirt/film on the plastic headlight housings can refract the light into the eyes of oncoming traffic. That's why, in Europe, cars with HIDs are required to have headlamp washers.

RX

 

I clean my car like every other day, so its def not because of that

 

Your water bill must be high. Cleaning your car is more fun if its done with paris hilton like in that hamburger commercial.