The thing about a real headlamp beam, is it is not allowed to have much stray light going upwards. There is supposed to be a sort of cutoff with minimal lighting up and to the right for the illumination of street signs.
A true fog beam is supposed to be wide and flat with even less upwards stray light, preferably Zero. None of the fashion accessories sold on vehicles today in a fog beam position, have anything near a compliant foglight beam light output pattern. Driving with these lights on, especially at highway speeds, is Just advertising ones ignorance and foolishness, and there is NO lack of this evident on every 40mph+ road each and every night.
The Dainel stern website has a good writeup of why fog lights are best left off and even the best fog lights are not that effective in actually allowing the human eyeball to see the road any better, and those that are effectve are only effective under 25mph.
Here are some more good reads, for those interested in vehicular lighting, by an actual expert who the masses inclined to performing lighting modifications, prefer to ignore:
https://drivingintherealworld.com/part-1-lighting-the-way-with-guest-daniel-stern/https://drivingintherealworld.com/part-2-lighting-the-way-with-daniel-stern/The 18 watt LEds in question, have spot beams yes, each individual beam would have a relatively focused round spot of light, equally bright on the top of the circle, as below. Hopefully all 6 cone shaped reflectors are focusing their LED in the same spot, but small variances in the LEDs position on the circuit board make this, wishful thinking.
There is no ability of the cone shaped reflector, like in a projector or a stock halogen headlamp reflector, to widen and flatten the beam to reduce upwards stray light, they are just a spot beam.
Now with that spot aimed down and to the right do anything, Yes, of course for the driver behind them going slower and watching the sides of the road, but a large percentage of that spotbeam light is still going to go into the drivers eyes of oncoming cars, even outside that spot beam. A blinding bluish white point of light that destroys their ability to see. Is it as bad as if the spot beam was aimed in the oncoming drivers face? of course not, but it is still bad. Way worse than headlights which actually meet FMVSS 108
Enough to have some federale or local cop not sniff out some mordita? I wish the cops would pull over those with excessively glaring obviously modified headlamps, but there is a lot of new cars today with horrid glare from the factory, especially when they have their 'fashionfogs' turned on too.
Its hard to beat the output of these 18 watt LEDs, the price and the mounting options make it hard to not want to plaster them everywhere. I see Jeeps with 4 and 5 pair of these lights all over the place, perhaps in addition to light bars.
I have a set shaped more cube like, triggered to come on only with my High beams. Those and my sealed beams getting 14.4v at the H4 connector are downright impressive, when I can actually use them safely.
A few months ago on a road trip, I suffered a low beam failure on the passenger side, well outside any metro area and well past the time any autopart store would still be open and needed some 3 more hours of driving before stopping for the night. I retasked one of these LED spot Beams to low beam duty, and Aimed it down and to the right, compared to the high beam aim, and I was getting flashed on a divided highway enough, that I aimed it farther down in a rest area, and was still getting flashed. The wall of the hotel we finally pulled into, had the LED spot beam hotspot aiming way lower than the still operable drivers side halogen low beam, but the white LED glow was lighting up the wall way up higher than the halogen sealed beam to the point of obnoxiousness, and it was no wonder I was getting flashed.
For grins, I took out the large road atlas and held it just over the top of the light, to block upwards light and was able to mimic the sealed beam light pattern on the hotel wall with minimal upwards straying light.
Spot beams are Not adequate fog lamps, they are not adequate auxiliary low beams, They are pretty effective as high beam assists, and for that duty, I'd actually prefer a pair of 36 watt lights, precisely aimed. To fill the weaker spots in the halogen high beam.
The amount of people I saw with ridiculous Lighting on I-10 driving back across country two months ago was infuriating. Whether on the other side of the road, or on the road behind me, frying my mirrors with aftermarket LED bulbs in halogen reflectors on the giant Bro trucks. I was opening my window and aiming my side mirror to try and reflect their disgusting lights back into their eyes, as foolish as that is. When they'd pass me their beam pattern had no more light on the road than my own lights, they were just lighting up that, and the canyon wall and trees and the airplanes, blissful in their arrogant ignorant self importance.
It Pegs my Misanthropy needle deep in the red.
Mex, an actual Auxiliary low beam headlight, or an actual quality fog beam of which there are very few, aimed somewhat off to the side would be a million times better in what you can see, and in the glare to other drivers department, however none of these items these are 34$ for a pair. So asking if inexpensive spot beams, in this application, will be just fine in the glare department to oncoming drivers, if aimed own and to the right, is you insulting your own intelligence.
Now if they are ging to be on a nice easy to reach switch and used only when there are no other cars on the road, well they will certainly be effective in allowing you to see better, but leaving them on with oncoming traffic, is going to make for irritated oncoming traffic, even aimed down and to the right.
