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Changing headlights to drive on the right at night.

My car has separate headlights for main beam and dipped beam. I am told that there is no need to make any changes if I want to drive in France at night. How unusual is this?

Reply to
Michael Chare
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Told by whom?

I thought that lights dip to the left when you drive on the left.

Reply to
Max Demian

Does the dipped beam have a flat profile, rather than giving extra light to the left? If so, it wouldn't matter which side of the road you are driving on.

On my car, I simply tell the computer that I will driving on the right and it adjusts its dipping profile to suit.

Reply to
nightjar

one of my cars has only up and down adjustment and is ok lhd or rhd ...

Reply to
Jim GM4DHJ ...

Yes the the beam does have a fairly flat profile and I have been told that is the reason. I don't think I have ever had a vehicle before which I have not had to change, but they have all only had two headlights, one on each side.

I had the previous version of the car which did not have separate lights and there weres a hard to find little levers which you could move to make the lights dip to the right.

Reply to
Michael Chare

Some cars, or their lights to be more exact, dip down and flat, rather than down to the left with a ?kick up?.

Point your car at a wall, in the dark, and look how the pattern changes as you dip the lights. It is quite obvious.

If yours do dip to the left and with a kick up, you just buy stick on converters. I fit them while in the Tunnel to the motorhome and to the car ( on the trailer) before leaving home.

Some vehicles you can adjust the lights - I can on the motorhome and could on the Smart Car we used to tow - but stick on converters are more convenient, especially if you don?t expect to drive at night and just need to comply with the rules.

Reply to
Brian

You used to buy specially-shaped cut-out reflective patches* to stick in the front of the light. These reflect the leftward dipped beam back into the reflector, and (sort of) redirected it towards the right (or at least less to the left!). I haven't driven in Europe since 2003, so haven't had occasion to buy them since.

*The shape depended on the type of light.
Reply to
Ian Jackson

I doubt that! Given the vagaries of headlamp lens designs and the randomness created by sticking on a generic sticker I think they do little more (if you?re lucky) than mask a section of the beam.

I think their most important function is to appease the French gendarmes. ;-)

Given the big changes in headlamp design I doubt you could apply a mask to most modern lights. I suspect they?ve mostly moved to a flat-topped beam or some other method of beam correction that doesn?t involve masks.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I?ve not seen that type. I?ve used the ones which seem to simply block the ?unwanted? part of the beam and the ones which have a (crude) series of ?prisms? cut / embedded in a jelly like plastic which seem to divert it. The latter are better light output wise but, in my experience, can come off by themselves- I lost a few while the car was on the trailer, I assume a wind eddy. etc.

Our previous motorhome had headlight protectors I?d fitted which had guides showing the areas you needed to block off to change the pattern. Simple black tape did the job. Oddly, the shape was totally different on each side. One had a large area to cover the other was only half the size.

Many UK drivers don?t seem to bother. I?ve never heard of anyone being stopped for not complying but it seems inconsiderate not to.

The current MH has small projector lights and you can either rotate them ( a fiddle due to access on an A class MH) or fit deflectors. I do the latter as I rarely, if ever, drive the MH at night abroad. I don?t recall ever doing so in 10 + years of motorhoming. We plan our trips to travel during the day. Even in the Uk, we only tend to drive the MH at night when returning from France, the hop from the tunnel home. We like to be relaxing in the evenings.

Reply to
Brian

There are a number of techniques to achieve the dip function and the companies which make the stickers provide a comprehensive guide to place the sticker depending on each type. The sheet on the one I last used must have been nearly A1 in size and covered in 5 cm or so boxes each with a drawing covering a type. The other side listed cars by make, model etc. Even less common vehicles were listed plus each drawing covers several types.

Reply to
Brian

Many of the cars with projector style headlamps (Halogen, HID or LED) are still behind a smooth cover. Correctly shaped and positioned stickers work there too.

Reply to
Steve Walker

Certainly that is the case for reflector type headlights but my point was that simple headlights like those are increasingly rare nowadays.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Over the past 50 or more years I have travelled to France by car probably hundreds of times and I have never, ever been stopped by a policeman worried by my lights. Way back I used to actually change the *bulbs* in my headlights to right-dipping yellow ones, since that time I have mostly had Citroens and they (supposedly) don't need converting for driving on the right.

Have you noticed lorry drivers carefully sticking bits of black sticky paper on their headlights when they board the ferry? :-)

Yes, I think many/most modern headlamps have such a sharp cut-off that they don't need anything doing, they may illuminate a less useful part of the road when dipped but that's all.

Reply to
Chris Green

eam.

Well that?s been my experience too but they certainly used to have a reputation for nit-picking and looking for excuses to fine UK motorists.

I wonder, do they still impound cars with built in sat-navs that show speed cameras?

Good point. Nope, never. ;-).

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Tim+ was thinking very hard :

I think my present (or previous) one has (had) a lever under the bonnet to swap the beam over.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

My mum's old Renault 6 had a plastic tab underneath each headlight on the outside: you could in theory have one lamp set to LHD and the other to RHD ;-) Those lights took spherical bulbs as opposed to being sealed-beam.

I've not seen any car since that which has adjustable lamp housings, though as I've never driven in LHD territory (and have no desire to except in an LHD car) I've never investigated. The tab on the Renault made it very obvious, without looking, that they were adjustable.

Can MOT testing centres check that headlights dip correctly when set to LHD, or are they only geared-up for testing RHD compliance?

Thank goodness that France has now abolished the requirement for all cars to have yellow headlights. I find yellow bulbs (as for yellow low-pressure sodium street lights) a very difficult light for seeing things.

Reply to
NY

NY wrote on 24/10/2021 :

Mine are the discharge type, with the golf ball lens thingummy.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

I think those levers were just for beam height adjustment, not LHD/RHD changes. My parents had two R4s with the same levers and I?m pretty sure they were just for load adjustment.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I don't know about Renaults, but the company Alfa-Romeo that I had in the early 2000s, had projector headlamps and definitely have a lever on both headlamps to adjust for left or right-hand driving. IIRC it gave a proper dip for driving on the left and a flat=topped beam for driving on the right.

Reply to
Steve Walker

Yeah, but R4s and R6s predate the Alfa by 25-30 years. Switches to change between RHD and LHD probably hadn?t entered any designers head back then.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

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