Re: 1990 XM 2.1 SED for Sale -- C6 ownership imminent!
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2016 7:30 am
My guess is that a flat top cut-off for the dip beam would be the prime requirement, in order to prevent dazzle.
The slope-end kick-up was meant to provide additional distance of illumination to the kerb side/verge, so that the roadside could more easily be seen.
This pattern was fairly easily specified and built into filament headlight design, when almost every car on the road was using H series halogen bulbs.
Now that there is a plethora of alternative light sources and optical arrangements, it wouldn't surprise me if the industry hadn't asked for the previous kick-up requirement to be relaxed.
By the looks of newish cars on the roads, the additional requirement of not to dazzle/distract oncoming traffic seems either to have been largely abandoned in practice, or diluted to something so subjective that testers either can't or won't invoke it, or just cannot cope with the variety of lamp patterns and types that present themselves. I'm not talking about modified cars here, but cars which are obviously in factory state.
You do wonder what the test/conformance requirements now are.
The slope-end kick-up was meant to provide additional distance of illumination to the kerb side/verge, so that the roadside could more easily be seen.
This pattern was fairly easily specified and built into filament headlight design, when almost every car on the road was using H series halogen bulbs.
Now that there is a plethora of alternative light sources and optical arrangements, it wouldn't surprise me if the industry hadn't asked for the previous kick-up requirement to be relaxed.
By the looks of newish cars on the roads, the additional requirement of not to dazzle/distract oncoming traffic seems either to have been largely abandoned in practice, or diluted to something so subjective that testers either can't or won't invoke it, or just cannot cope with the variety of lamp patterns and types that present themselves. I'm not talking about modified cars here, but cars which are obviously in factory state.
You do wonder what the test/conformance requirements now are.