The 3 has projector lens for low beam, the lens has a distinctive cut-off line, above which is probably too dark.
So I have a question for those who have fog lights, when the fog light is turned on, does it help to eliminate the headlamp cut-off line? Thanks. If so, I'll definitely get a pair of fog lights.

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nope
the only the foglights are good for is well, fog, and to light up the area right in front of your car.....

 

What he said.... ^ ^ ^
Fog lights are intentionally mounted low and point low to cut underneath the fog and light up the road surface.
I, for one, am happy that the DOT in this country are adapting more to E-spec light standards. I like a sharp upper limit cut-off. They've been the standard in European cars for years and years, but until recently were illegal here in all but motorcycles(?).

 

I like the projector lens too, and will love them much much more if all cars, esp. obnoxius SUVs have them. SUV's high mounted head light causes a huge pain either they are on the opposite side of the tranfic or behind you. My problem with the cut-off line is that they don't do well on hilly road, if we were to adopt the projector lenses, we need to have dynamic leveling to go hand in hand with this type of lenses. From a technical standpoint, blocking half of the light may be a waste of energy, the lens should be redesigned to utilize all the light energy, which will improve the lighting effect.

Another issue I have is that more and more people are having daytime running light, if you had 100 cars, 90 of them have DRL, then the rest 10 will be less visible. I might change my opinion in the future, but as for the way the DRLs are designed and installed, I dislike them, but I might need them because I don;t wnat to be less visible in the crowd of cars that have them on.
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Agree with wineye...I had projector style lense on my Integra and like them even more on my MS3. Projector style lenses + Xenon = a great view of the road ahead at night.

 

I think you misunderstand what's going on there. The light is nort being blocked, but redirected into the lower portion of the light output. Less stray, unfocused, undirected output. That has been the problem w/OE "sealed beam" style headlights for years is all that untapped energy being directed into the sky rather than on the road.
I get your point about hilly road driving however. That's a tough one. But as you say, a dynamic stability system would certainly help a lot under those circumstances. Probably too expensive a fix for a "cheap" car like the 3 though. And what would the effect be for oncoming drivers?

 

I don't quite understand the purpose of DRLs... can someone explain why one would extra light during the day?

 

All European 3's with HIDs have auto leveling systems for the headlights as it's required to be street legal there. There's no provision in the US DOT guidelines for an auto system so Mazda saved money on our 3's by putting a manual leveling system in our HID equipped cars.

Because it makes your car much more visible and if your car is more visible people are less likely to hit it. Saturn made a pretty good commercial for this back in the 90's (when they were one of the first ones to add DRLs to their cars) by having a camera in a saturn while they drove around and everyone around them kept yelling out that their lights were on. Granted that's a commerical but even in real life you tend to notice vehicles with headlights on, or those with DRLs. I always drive around with my headlights on both in my car, and while at work. I'd personnally like to be able to wire up a switch for my highbeams to come on a 1/2 power to use as DRLs. I like the idea of DRLs, but obviously I'd want to be able to turn them off sometimes.

 

my friend put some i think 8000K HID Fog lights on his GTP. and the things are brighter then his HID headlights and hibeams together.. he gets flashed all the time... its quite funny lol

 

Virgin, I took for granted on what I read from wiki, here's the excerpt from wiki about projector lens:

Projector (polyellipsoidal) lamps [/align] Projector optics, side view[/align] [/align] [/align] [/align] Projector headlamps[/align] [/align] [/align] In this system a filament is located at one focus of an ellipsoidal reflector and has a condenser lens at the front of the lamp. A shade is located at the image plane, between the reflector and lens, and the projection of the top edge of this shade provides the low-beam cutoff. The shape of the shade edge, and its exact position in the optical system, determines the shape and sharpness of the cutoff. The shade may have a solenoid actuated pivot to provide both low and high beam, or it may be stationary in which case separate high-beam lamps are required. The condenser lens may have slight fresnels or other surface treatments to reduce cutoff sharpness. Recent condenser lenses incorporate optical features specifically designed to direct some light upward towards the locations of retroreflective overhead road signs.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, I thought it's the shade that blocks the light of the upper half.


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