Originally Posted by
Danno123
Well, ECE R20 was ratified in 1985 and is clearly a superior standard than SAE/DOT/FVMSS108. Not a single U.S.-made car has headlights that conforms to the higher standard. R20 defines better cutoff and allows for more light on the road by reducing glare above centreline. Also defines a wider pattern for clearer viewing of sidwalks and pedestrians. Only a triple-axis ellipsoloid reflector can produce such a lighting pattern. One of the major reasons the big-three blocked such standards, higher-cost and lower profit-margins. Then again, most U.S. consumers wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.
Other standards such as AFS (automatic leveling) have been around for over 25-years as well. Pack a bunch of groceries and passengers into your car and the headlights are now aimed 2-3 degrees above horizontal. Gee, would be nice if the headlights were smart enough to correct themselves.
Instead, we have ricer gang-bangers with illegal HID upgrades in their filament reflectors who think that blinding everyone on the road is cool. Yeah, very forward thinking.
BTW - way back when, the U.S. was a leader in textiles, clothing and more recently consumer-electronics. Where are these leaders now? Heck, once upon a time, some far off middle-eastern country in the desert was at the top of civilization and could build great stone monuments that no one can replicate even today. Certainly don't see them claiming that fame to put themselves on top today eh?
Danno, haven't seen you on the site for a while!
Any US automaker or company that sells cars in the US must satisfy the full set of FMVSS standards to be able to sell their products. if they can satisfy R20 or other ECE standards at the same time, great. Nothing but the business case prevents a car sold in the US from having automatic levelers, and light distribution that is closer to the ECE standards. While ECE is thought to be better, it gives you less light above the cutoff. Is that ok? Well, if you can't see street name signs and peds waiting to cross the street or about to jump off the curb in front of you (I live in a college town), maybe not.
The issue of non-compliant higher-performance headlights has been present at least since the early '70s, when I put Euro-spec H4 headlights on my Fiat 128. It had great illumination, I adjusted the lights for a just-below horizontal cutoff, and I liked them. Careful upgrades are as possible as dangerous ones. The rice-bangers you mention are taking an additional risk: fire or distortion in the plastic headlights that are rated well for halogen bulbs but underrated for HID bulbs. The shape of the HID light source is different from that of a halogen, so the same optics won't work correctly. Either way, the optics have to be matched to the bulb for proper light distribution.
Leveling? I'm pretty sure when I worked on a spec for a leveling actuator, it was for a US-market car. I don't expect an after-market leveler, if one exists, to work real well. I'd rather see a hand-crank used with some kind of twisting Bowden cable arrangement.
But suspension settling isn't a problem bikes have. We do have the problem of wanting to see the road surface well while not blinding oncoming drivers while giving the oncomings enough light (above the cutoff) to see us from any "relevant" angle, and being able to see pedestrians at/near the curb, traffic and street identification signage in pitch black with rain falling. That's really not a different set of design metrics from a car. The details of performance specs will be different, but the performance goals are the same. And seeing a deer before it wanders out in front of your bike would be a good thing as our suburbs continue to encroach on their habitat.