Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
European manufacturers specifically german, have them set up in a specific manner for flash to pass use. For example, my GTI, has bi-xenon lights. The hi and low beam are differentiated by the level of a shutter mechanism to re-aim the lights determining if they are high or low beam. When you push the lever forward, it re-aims the bulb. The passing lights, are a separate halogen HIGH BEAM bulb next to the xenon bulb, that only trigger when you pull the stock towards you. The reason they are designed this way, is so that if your headlights are on, you are not toggling between xenon high and low beams. So if your high beams are on, it is essentially double high beams when you flash. If your low beams are are, it is low + high. They are even labelled passing lights in the owners manual.
This is as specific design, because if you are doing 250 KPH on an autobahn or autostrada, you can signal a driver ahead of you well in advance, or if you are on their tail. People coming the other way in Germany or Italy, whatever euro country you want to choose, seem to be ok with people flashing their lights on highways, and aren't blinded and suffering detached retinas and brain stems, all when they have what is closing speeds of over 500 kph in some cases. Don't see why this is such an issue on our LOL 100 kph highway system. You will find some of the best civilian drivers on the planet in germany, driving cars that embarrass what we drive here, and they have some of the safest highways on the planet, and flash to pass is perfectly legal.
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Actually the reason for this is because if you pull that stock in the daytime its just running the halogen bulbs. If they were not setup this way, you would be activating your HID's every time you pulled the stock to flash someone. This would kill your Ballasts and HID bulbs very very fast.
That is the only reason for that, also we have DRL's in Canada, running HID's on reduced power is very very hard on them, hence why you have a separate Halogen High beam.