The Cost and Safety Benefits of Aftermarket HIDs

Vehicle manufacturers in 2011 have continued on their rampant upgrade path, as dated technologies are thrown aside in favor of increasingly popular and better-performing ones. Just 10 years ago, only Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW offered HIDs optional or standard on a more than a handful of vehicles in their lineup.

A half-decade later, manufacturers such as Volvo, Volkswagen, and Jaguar followed suit, offering HID lights on many more models than previously available. This proliferation of optional and standard factory HIDs has made this headlight type much more commonplace on the road today.

The Cost and Safety Benefits of Aftermarket HIDs

However, because many cars still don’t come with these headlights, and because many drivers still use older models on the road, factory HID use is still limited.

In retrospect, this isn’t entirely a negative development. As aftermarket automotive parts websites have flooded the market in the past few years, many headlight upgrade alternatives have appeared, allowing drivers to upgrade their cars’ headlights to HIDs without necessitating purchases directly from the factory.

The Cost and Safety Benefits of Aftermarket HIDs

Manufacturer-specific parts can be expensive, often prohibitively so. Just consider the difference in price between replacing your car’s transmission at the local Ford, Honda, or Chevy dealership nearby to the price for the same repair at a local shop. Plus, aftermarket HID kits allow you to customize the color of your car’s new headlights, something that isn’t possible with factory versions, meaning you’d have to spend even extra to upgrade despite having HIDs on your car already.

The safety benefits of HIDs are quite numerous as well. Besides the well-known benefits seen by drivers of Audi A8s and BMW 700 Series vehicles that are equipped with factory HIDs, such as extended visual range and increased brightness, there are other important safety attributes to consider. Aftermarket HIDs, for instance, can be set to aim away from an oncoming driver’s eyes when installed, which is useful to prevent blinding the other driver. Considering the widespread coverage various news organizations gave to factory HIDs and their blinding of drivers, this change has been welcome news to many.

Plus, HIDs produce light that reflects better off of road signs and markers, so if there’s a critical warning you need to read, you’ll be less likely to miss it as it approaches. This lighting technology also enables improved peripheral vision, giving drivers who use it significant vision benefits at night.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, between 30-and-40 thousand people in the United States die in car accidents every year. With an increased emphasis on better road vision, there is hope in the industry and beyond that fatalities will decrease, and new technologies may be leading the way on that front.