Adding the right aftermarket lights to your pickup truck or SUV brings big safety benefits.
Winter has finally set its grip firmly around us, marked by shorter days, longer nights, and just plain nasty driving conditions. Good lights on my vehicles play a critical role in how safe I feel while driving after dark.
You see, I’ve reached that middle-age plateau where certain body pars, such as my eyes, just aren’t working quite as sharp as they were when I was 20-something. My optometrist, Dr. Max Edrington, reinforced my observation when he told me the average 60-year-old person needs seven times as much light as a 20-year-old to see well in the dark, according to the American Optometric Association.
“There are plenty of reasons why virtually every 20-year-old wants to go on a road trip at night and virtually every 60-year-old doesn’t,” says Anne Sumers, M.D., an ophthalmologist in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
“First, as you age, your eyes need more light to work properly. Second, the lenses in your eyes aren’t as clear at 60 as they were at 20. Third, as you get older, your pupils don’t dilate as well as they used to.
And in order to see well at night, your pupils have to get very large. So the overall result is that you have a lot more difficulty focusing on objects and seeing at night as you age.”
Winter driving conditions aggravates the night-vision problem for all of us. Rain wets windshields and drops visibility; snow reflects the headlight’s beam back to the driver, creating back glare; and regular headlights and factory fog lights are no match for thick fog.
MAKING THE LIGHT CHOICE
What I’ve found that greatly decreases the stress of driving at night in poor weather conditions is adding aftermarket lights. Not just any lights, either, but lights specific to the need.
Choosing auxiliary lights entails a few more considerations than wattage, price, and looks of the product you’re eyeing. For instance, what types of conditions do you find yourself in most frequently: Rain? Fog? Snow? Does your after-dark driving consist mostly of long desolate stretches of open highway, city streets, or narrow, twisting country roads?
The reason for such questions is because the really good aftermarket lights have been designed to handle very specific needs. Therefore, choosing the “right” light may entail mounting more than one set of lights on your vehicle to get the most benefit when visibility goes down the tubes.
Basically, the two types of auxiliary lights fisherman can really make the best use of are fog lights and driving lights.
Good fog lights (not those that come on your vehicle from the factory!) produce a very wide, flat light pattern that reaches out quite a ways in front of the vehicle without their light glaring back in your eyes.
The really good ones, like those from PIAA (www.piaalights.com), IPF (www.arbusa.com), and Hella (www.hellausa.com), are designed to focus the light well below the level of the low-beam of your vehicle’s headlights while doing a great job illuminating the road from shoulder to shoulder.
Driving lights are much more powerful and are designed to punch a narrower, yet far longer reaching light beam out beyond the reach of conventional headlights. They are typically hooked up so they are only activated when the vehicle’s high-beams are turned on.
Those are the two types of lights on my new Tundra pickup and on my older Chevy TrailBlazer SUV. I also find that a third type of light is quite useful while the vehicle is parked: flood/work lights.
What I find works great are the PIAA 1500 Back-Up lights. I actually have three sets of these mounted on the roof rack of my new Tundra: one pair on each side of the rack and one set at the rear. These are on individual switches so I can light up the area immediately around the truck where I’m working, be it on the boat, beside the garage, or while waiting for my turn to launch at the ramp.
REAL FOG LIGHTS
The factory fog lights on all pickups and SUVs are basically worthless because they don’t have any reach and the lens quality is poor so the light isn’t focused where it does the most good.
When it comes to fog lights I have a fondness for IPF 840 Series fog lights (www.arbusa.com). These IPFs have both power and excellent lens design to provide very good foul-weather lighting. Another excellent fog light is the PIAA 540 Extreme White model. I have these mounted in the front bumper of my Tundra.
Good driving lights heat up the road way beyond any pickup or SUV’s factory high-beam headlight. Despite the multitude of trucks running the roads with a half-dozen of the biggest lights they can find adorning their light bars, moderation and light placement is the real key to lighting the road in the wee hours of the morning on the way to the honey hole.
DRIVING LIGHTS
The fact is ultra-powerful lights positioned high above the cab renders them almost worthless in a snow storm or fog because their beam of intense light is reflected off the moisture-laden air right back into the driver’s eyes, producing a light-induced white out.
A much wiser move is to mount driving lights level with or slightly below the headlights. This mounting location minimizes the chances of glare while maintaining their long reach. (Don’t forget to aim them as well. Measure from ground to center of the light, then take a second measurement from the center of the beam’s hot spot out 25 feet from the light. The Hot spot should be adjusted so it is 1.5-2 inches lower than the center of the lenses.)
My favorite driving lights are the new PIAA Dual-Mode 525 (driving and low-beam) and the ProComp Slim Profile driving light (www.performanceproducts.com). The PIAA wires in to your headlights. On low-beam it throws out a bright wide beam much as would fog lights. On high-beam they flat light up the road out a good half-mile.
The ProComp Slim Profile driving light is great because it is only 2 ½ inches deep, yet the 7-inch diameter light throws out a powerful, well-defined beam similar to the PIAAs. It also costs a third the price of the dual-modes.
Speaking of price, the best light kits come with pre-wired harnesses, toggle switch, relay and fuse. Such kits save time and future aggravation that can come by using cheap or wiring components that are too small for the job.
LANDING LIGHTS
Of course, if you want to do the lighting upgrade on the cheap, use an old trick of mine to save as much money as you can while putting on a set of powerful driving lights. Buy a pair of rubber-housed tractor implement lights (part #16300/$9 per) from Northern Tool & Equipment (800.222.5381) and a couple 4509 GE Aircraft Landing lights (GEQ4509/$26 per) from Sky Geek (866.464.4368.)
Throw away the tractor bulbs and pop in the aircraft landing lights. Now you have a pair of sun-emerging driving lights mounted in unbreakable and rust-proof black rubber housings. Make sure you use a heavy duty toggle switch and a relay when you wire them in. If you don’t know where to get the wiring stuff, check out Painless Performance Products (www.painlessperformance.com). If they can’t handle your automotive wiring needs, nobody can.
Another good source is Off-Road Adventures magazine. They have a number of good light choices. You’d be surprised at how much difference the right aftermarket lights, mounted in the right places, make on those long, dark drives to the water.
Whether you run rubber-housed aircraft lights or the most expensive versions from the big name brands I’ve mentioned, one thing will be perfectly clear the next foul winters night you spend behind the wheel: You’ll see the road ahead just fine—old eyes or young.