Do Xenon Headlights Make Winter Driving Safer?

Advice from Ottawa Car Components Experts

Were you caught off guard trying to drive in the veritable blizzard the followed quickly on the heels of Christmas this year? It’s a universal truth that winter driving requires care, precision, and above all, vigilance. But does it also require the right car components in Ottawa’s snowstorms and cold, dark nights? And can installing high-intensity discharge (HID) lights, such as xenon headlights, make a powerful and positive impact on your safety when driving through these winter conditions that the nation’s capital sees year after year?

Did you know that, with traditional halogen headlights, even when they’re turned on at night, you can still lose up to 70% of your overall visibility? And that’s not even accounting for snow—that’s just plain, old-fashioned night driving. One of the biggest issues affecting drivers in the winter is that the sun sets much earlier, increasing the total time they spend driving through the dark and increasing the risk of accident, since visibility is a major factor in road safety.

Enter the xenon headlight, which can produce a whopping 3,000 lumens of light. The result, when used properly, is that they provide exceptional illumination in dark conditions compared to their halogen cousins. However, it’s important to note that, when used improperly, they can become a hazard to other drivers. That is why it’s vitally important to have your headlights upgraded by a professional dealer of car components in Ottawa. Headlights need to be properly aligned, and DIY installations are notorious for not meeting up to the level of quality required for safe operation. A professional installer can ensure that your new HID lights are focused and aligned correctly as low beams, so that they won’t become blinding to other drivers.

Proper low-beam alignment will also make the roads safer for you when it snows. See, during snowstorms, high-beam lights can produce a lot of glare on the falling snow, which can quickly become blinding for you. This problem can be made even worse if those high beams are xenon-powered, quickly becoming disastrous. Properly-installed HID headlights, however, will simply continue working hard to cut through the snow and the dark, giving you serious visibility in any conditions.

Another benefit to xenon headlights is that the increased light they produce makes drivers more alert on a physical level. Since our sleep cycles are largely regulated by light, it can become easy to become drowsy in dark conditions with poor visibility—no matter how rested you might be. And when you become less drowsy, your reaction time becomes slower, which poses incredible risk to you and your passengers. The increased luminosity xenon provides is more stimulating to the body, leaving you more alert and focused on the task of driving.

To learn more about what xenon can do for you, get in touch with your local retailer of high-quality car components in Ottawa.