WSJ: Car Customizers, Government Clash

[question everything]

Car Customizers, Government Clash

Furor Over Headlight-Conversion Kits Is Ultimately a Collision of Cultures
November 15, 2004

Bright, high-intensity discharge headlights have become a status symbol for a lot of American drivers, including many who can't afford the high-end German sedans that made them popular. Others, still seeing blue after an encounter with a set of these intensely bright bulbs, consider HID to be a four-letter word.

Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pursuing a crackdown on companies that sell certain HID headlight-conversion kits, and the organization that represents America's car-customization industry is crying foul. This dispute is highly technical in many respects. But the underlying issue is fairly basic: It's a culture clash.

(snip)

It was only a matter of time before the customization industry's outlaw streak got it into trouble with the national safety cops. About three years ago, the NHTSA responded to a growing number of complaints about headlight glare by opening a formal review of the issue. In the course of that inquiry, the NHTSA began getting complaints about high-intensity discharge headlights, which were starting to appear on expensive, mostly German, luxury cars. These lights cast a bright, blue-white light that is distinctly different from the yellowish beam from a standard headlight. Moreover, HID lights tend to create a sharp line between the beam and the darkness surrounding it, in contrast to the fuzzy borders of a standard headlight beam.

(snip)

NHTSA regulators, however, concluded that many of these HID conversion kits didn't comply with federal standards. Some aftermarket HID lights, NHTSA found, produced "many times the permitted glare intensity." Many didn't have proper low- and high-beam functions -- they were just on. Some weren't aimed properly. In early 2003, NHTSA began cracking down. The agency began contacting sellers of HID conversion kits and effectively ordering them to stop selling lights that didn't comply with federal rules, and to recall kits they had sold. One big supplier of HID kits and replacement lamps, American Products Co., was socked with a $650,000 civil penalty. In all, NHTSA says it has taken action against 24 companies that retailed what the agency contended were illegal HID kits.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110028575453072768,00.html

[madrchsod]

1. totally agree

those cheap bulbs are crap and i hope to hell they get banned..