Originally Posted by mayonaise
:slap:
good luck trying to win in that subjective-judgement argument of yours. bottom line: you don't really know, so until you do, you're just making an assumption. if there's anything at all that is incorrect about that statement, point it out, because that is ALL that i said.
Incorrect? Not exactly. I'd characterize it more as "incomplete." You are correct that there is some assumption necessary unless I stop and poll every driver. But it is a REASONABLE ASSUMPTION that a significant proportion of bright lights are due to deliberate modification. Can you seriously be disputing this?
If I drop a rock over a cliff, and a few moments later I hear a rock hit the bottom, I ASSUME the sound came from my rock. I suppose it's POSSIBLE that there was someone with a catcher's mitt and a different rock halfway down the cliff who substituted rocks in midflight. But it's not likely enough to make it necessary to check every time.
Back to the lights now - there is a thriving market in bright bulbs and "rebased" or full-on HID conversions. And there are cars driving around with lights significantly brighter than stock. What's the more reasonable assumption - that all these cars have aiming problems and the people buying those light kits are hanging them on their living room walls for decoration? Or that people are installing them in their cars and driving? If you say "we can't know" you're technically correct in a limited sort of way, but by those standards of universal doubt we can't know ANYTHING. You can't know, for example, that someone didn't sneak into your house while you were asleep, steal everything, and replace it all with exact replicas. You just assume it didn't happen.
Originally Posted by mayonaise
right, put an extremely bright light next to a regular light and you can tell the difference. but like you said, you still can't tell what the brightness is, if it's illegal or not, etc etc etc. i might think someone's lights are perfectly fine, and the person in the passenger's seat might think they're blinding the shit out of him. i know that exact situation has happened to me before. it's all subjective - which is all i said. there are people that put obnoxiously bright lights in their stock housings, yea, and maybe they shouldn't do that as a courtesy to other drivers. but if it's legal, then tough shit. just don't stare at people's headlights, and you'll never be blinded by them. look at the right edge of the asphault/lane if you really want to avert your eyes - learned that in driver's ed, and guess what, it works! :fawk:
There's really no reason to take that attitude. All *I* asked in the original post was, why do people put really bright lights in their cars, and do they get hassled by the cops if they're overbright. Nowhere in that post did I say that ALL bright lights are too bright for me, and if you came away with that, well, who's making assumptions? Some are, some aren't. The question of whether a given light is legal is for the cops to decide, and that's why I asked if people are hassled by the cops.
We're in agreement that some people put bright lights in their cars. We're in agreement that some of those are done poorly or inconsiderately and create a problem for other drivers. So I really don't see why you think it's necessary to flip me off.
Originally Posted by iobidder
I appreciate that - but mine's an E39. Different altogether.