White light VS Yellow headlights?

[Thaleshwar]

Hi,

I was wondering what is general opinion / or proven opinon as which is better headlights to have White or Yellow in term of "being visible" to others?

Comments welcome.

Tks & Rgds.

[Luckypants]

White every time. Gives a better light to ride by and is generally brighter.

Yellow (or any other colour) requires that the bulb or lens be fitted with a filter to colour the light. The filter REMOVES the other colours of the light spectrum, thus total total amount of light hitting the road is less. i.e. your lights are dimmer therefore you will see less and be less visible on the road.

Finally, another thing about coloured light. If your light is pure yellow for example, then objects that have no yellow colour in them will appear black as they will reflect no yellow light. This theoretically would mean that a blue object in front of a red object would be masked as both appear black - hence appearing as one object. So you end up driving around with a lot of black things looming up on you. Obviously in the real world, your filter will let some blue / red spectrum light through and objects are colours made up from at least two primary colours, so it is not that black and white (pun intended), but you see the point of not seeing so well with tinted light.

[SoulKiss]

Hi,

I was wondering what is general opinion / or proven opinon as which is better headlights to have White or Yellow in term of "being visible" to others?

Comments welcome.

Tks & Rgds.

I use white lights but wear yellow glasses if that helps :)

Does mean that LED based traffic lights go Red, Amber, Blue tho :), however this is balanced by the reduced glare at night from headlights.

[ophic]

White every time. Gives a better light to ride by and is generally brighter.

Yellow (or any other colour) requires that the bulb or lens be fitted with a filter to colour the light. The filter REMOVES the other colours of the light spectrum, thus total total amount of light hitting the road is less. i.e. your lights are dimmer therefore you will see less and be less visible on the road.

Close but no banana. Incandescent bulbs give off a yellowish light - so to make them look whiter, they put blue tints on the bulb coatings. You can see this on bulbs like Osram Nightbreakers etc. You correctly state that these coloured filters remove light, so reduce overall brightness.

So the slightly yellower unfiltered bulbs are usually brighter, all else being equal.

The other reason in favour of yellow light is that it refracts less in fog, giving less glare.

And lastly, one chap on here used to ride a gixxer with a very distinctive amber headlight cover. It stood out much more during the day than normal white light, to other road users.

But under normal circumstances, light as close to the white of sunlight is normally best.

[NTECUK]

Hi,

"being visible" to others?


Tks & Rgds.
If your on 2 wheels your invisable.
Remember that as the first rule of self prservation :-?

[Bordtea]

Found with my 'ice white' xenons in my car that although it made the car look much better when you looked at the headlights, the actual road lighting was much worse. It did reflect signs much better though.

[Sir Trev]

Fairly sure yellow lights are an MoT failure. Only allowed to show white light to the front (indicators excepted). Mate had a yellow cover to his light and the MoT tester took it off and handed it to him before he wheeled the bike into the bay, telling him to not to bring it attached to the bike again or he'd just fail it.

[NTECUK]

Nope"Method of Inspection Reason for Rejection 1. Check the headlamp emits a WHITE or YELLOW light "
see,
http://www.transportoffice.gov.uk/crt/doitonline/bl/mottestingmanualsandguides/mottestingmanualsandguides.htm

[Thaleshwar]

White every time. Gives a better light to ride by and is generally brighter.

Yellow (or any other colour) requires that the bulb or lens be fitted with a filter to colour the light. The filter REMOVES the other colours of the light spectrum, thus total total amount of light hitting the road is less. i.e. your lights are dimmer therefore you will see less and be less visible on the road.

Finally, another thing about coloured light. If your light is pure yellow for example, then objects that have no yellow colour in them will appear black as they will reflect no yellow light. This theoretically would mean that a blue object in front of a red object would be masked as both appear black - hence appearing as one object. So you end up driving around with a lot of black things looming up on you. Obviously in the real world, your filter will let some blue / red spectrum light through and objects are colours made up from at least two primary colours, so it is not that black and white (pun intended), but you see the point of not seeing so well with tinted light.

Many thanks for your detailed and scintific reply. Seems physics was your favourite.. your detailed reply reminded me my younger days of serious photograpy when I was to play around with series of colour correction and enhancement filters... and colour temperatures etc

I think I did not word my post correctly as I really should had said 'Tungsten light' instead of yellow which sounds tinted or filter generated light.

I was comparing this new generation of headlights which are almost bright white against normal tunsten light, I am under impression that during the day tungsten light is more visible in mirror of dirver ahead of us than the having the white / bluish light. Thanks

[Thaleshwar]

The other reason in favour of yellow light is that it refracts less in fog, giving less glare.

And lastly, one chap on here used to ride a gixxer with a very distinctive

Your mention about the refraction of light is somthing to think and make note about. Thanks.