What Happen if You Put LED Lights without Permission

Today, buying a car with halogen headlights is out of fashion. It is almost to choose xenon or bi-xenon headlights; what is carried are the LED lights.

LEDs produce a beam of white light that illuminates a larger area than xenon and much more than halogen. They are also more efficient, last longer, and allow for much more attractive design options (yes, they are also more expensive). It is because of all these pros that the fashion of mounting LED lights in cars that did not have them as standard is spreading without many knowing that they are committing an irregularity.
Types of lights that a car can mount


Halogen. It is regulated by the ECE R37 standard. It consists of a reflector or parabola that projects the light emitted by the bulb. The custom car lights should obey traffic laws. They must have a system to regulate the height of the beam and not dazzle other users.
Xenon. Its use is regulated by the ECE R99 standard. It is a projector that uses a discharge or xenon bulb as a light source that, instead of having a filament and a halogen gas inside, consists of two electrodes separated by a quartz bulb inside which is the xenon under pressure. They provide a whiter light than halogens and there are different options: bixenon, trixenon...
LEDs. Contemplated in the ECE 128 standard, this lighting system is the fastest on the market: they illuminate at full intensity in fractions of a second. In addition, they have a useful life that sometimes exceeds that of the vehicle itself, they emit a light of 5,500 degrees Kelvin (similar to sunlight) and consume very little.

The Law establishes that halogen headlights can only be mounted on cars with optics designed for halogen light sources; xenon are only allowed on vehicles that leave the factory with optics designed for xenon light source; and, in the same way, LED lights are only allowed on cars with optics designed for LED light sources.

So what happens if you decide to mount LED lights on a car equipped with halogen headlights?

Sernauto has launched a campaign in which he explains that:

It is only possible to mount LED lights in those vehicles that already have them installed from the factory, since they have optics designed for this type of light source (compliance with ECE 128).
It is not allowed to install an LED light in a halogen optic (non-compliance with ECE R37), with a financial penalty for the user of the vehicle.

Led lights

What can be done is to mount LED lights inside the vehicle to increase visibility in the passenger compartment.

Sernauto explains that beyond the collection effort, the prohibition of mounting LED lights in unprepared cars is intended to avoid risks. "When mounting an LED lamp in an optic that has been designed for a halogen, the reflection of the light beams is not adequate," they explain. Among the dangers derived is driving with insufficient lighting, dazzling other drivers and having poor lighting on curves.