Honks High Beams from Oncoming Traffic Your Headlights are Too Bright

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Have you ever been driving down the road in the middle of the night? It's a little bit dark outside, of course, and for some reason every time a car drives by you, they're flashing their high beams at you or even honking their horn as they drive by. Why are they doing this? Well, I wanna talk about it. Let's get into it.

Now, the first thing that we're gonna talk about is headlamp alignment. This is gonna be something that's very important because, of course, if one of your headlamps is out of alignment and maybe it's aiming a little bit high, or even a little bit low, you're gonna find that you have an issue when you're trying to see down the road. Typically, your headlamps can get unaligned when you get into, maybe, a fender bender or an accident of some sort. So if you have to go ahead and replace that headlamp assembly, you need to make sure that you align it.

Other than that, suspension can cause an issue too. If your front end's sagging, or maybe you replaced your front struts, it might lift it up a little bit. Well now, of course, the angle of your headlamps is changed as well. People don't typically think about aligning their headlamps after they do suspension work but it is something that you definitely at least wanna check because if your headlamps are aiming up in any way, that's gonna cause an issue for a driver that's coming at you in on-coming traffic.

So, how do you know if your headlights are out of alignment? Well, the easiest way is to park perpendicular up against a wall. Essentially, you wanna be aiming directly at a nice, flat wall. Go ahead and back yourself up carefully about 20 feet, 25 feet, aiming your headlights directly at that wall. Go ahead and turn on your headlights and then look at the beams. You wanna see if you have one that's going up like this, and then one that's sitting pretty much level, or even aiming down a little bit. If you find one that's aiming up, go ahead and bring it right down and try to line it up approximately with the other one if you can't take a measurement.

To adjust your headlights, typically, the adjustment points are gonna be on the back. Some headlights are gonna have one adjustment, others will have two. The ones with two are typically gonna be for side-to-side and up-and-down, and to adjust these, usually, you can use a basic too such as possibly a screwdriver. And if your headlights seem light they were just a little bit off, like maybe one was a little higher than the other and you want it to be extra precise, you could try using a tape measure. Go ahead and take that tape measure with your headlights on, bring it right up to the headlamp assembly, and measure where that beam's at. Then, of course, go down to the wall that's, like I said before, approximately 20 feet, 25 feet away, and then measure where the beam's at on that. You wanna make sure that you have them approximately the same, if not, even just coming down a little bit when you're at that wall.

Okay. So we talked about alignment. Now let's talk about headlamp assemblies. The assemblies come in all different shapes and sizes and, of course, they come in all different types as well. Some of those lenses are gonna be reflective. They're essentially just gonna have little mirrors on the inside that kinda angle different angles, and what that's gonna do is reflect the light down the road so you're gonna be able to see. Another type of lamp assembly would be a projector type. That's the type if you're looking at the lamp assembly itself, and you looked into the front, you're gonna be able to see, like, this little round thing inside, like a fisheye. That's actually a projector type, and what that's supposed to do is you have the beam that comes in from behind it, the projector of course is gonna send that beam focused down the road the way that it needs to go.

So, speaking of the lamp assemblies, what we also want to mention is it doesn't really matter if you have the reflective type or even the projector type. If the outside of the lamp assembly looks like it's glazed or hazed over in any way, that, of course, is gonna divert the light in any direction that it wants to, and, of course, you're gonna find out that you have light going up, down, left, and right, and people are probably gonna be flashing their high beams at you. And, of course, if those lamp assemblies are glazed over, you're gonna wanna make sure that you just go ahead and replace them. Some people will try to refurbish them, and, of course, that's gonna work temporarily, but overall, it's just gonna end up getting glazed over again, and you're gonna have to do it again, and again, and again. And if you have to replace them, just replace them as a pair.

So now we're gonna talk about headlight bulbs. There's a few different types. You could, essentially, have a halogen bulb, which is kinda like a weak bulb. Typically, you're gonna see it, it's almost gonna look a little yellow. Or, of course, you can get yourself LED bulbs. Those are gonna be a little bit brighter than the actual halogen bulbs, and, of course, you can get them in different colors as well. Or you can also get HID bulbs or Xenon bulbs. Those are gonna be much brighter than the LEDs and especially those halogen bulbs, and those come in nice colors as well. But those HID bulbs you only wanna use in the projector-type headlamp assemblies. If you use them in a reflective type, you might potentially melt the headlamp assembly which, of course, will be very bad. But, of course, if you're using a bright type of bulb, like the HIDs or even the LEDs, you always have the possibility of shining all that extra light down the road, into somebody's eyes while they're driving coming at you.

All right. Now, I wanna keep this short and sweet, so I'm just gonna wrap it up. If you're having an issue driving the road at night, you have a whole bunch of people flashing their high beams at you or even honking at you, more than likely, it's gonna come down to the headlamps, like I said. If that's the case, check your alignment. You wanna make sure that the alignment's good. You also wanna pay attention to the lamp assembly itself. If it looks like it's glazed over, you know that it's reflecting the light in any direction and it's causing an issue to the person driving towards you. Other than that, if you've got a high-intensity bulb inside there or even a nice LED that's super bright, of course, that's gonna cause an issue for the person coming in at you.

Now, I hope this video helped you and I hope you learned a little something. Maybe you have a story of your own and you wanna talk about it. If you do, leave it in the comment section below, because I always love to hear from you. If you like the video, smash on the like button for me. It would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell. That way there, you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.