The generic driving lights do fan out a lot more light but at a lot less range. They are good at lighting up the sides of the trail but crap for seeing what’s more than 30′ in front of you. As to whether or not it would cause a glare issue on the hood I can’t say. I kind of doubt it because the light is so unfocused.
Driving lights are designed to supplement your high beam headlights. Auxbeam Driving Lights produce a rectangular beam pattern that can reach further and wider than your headlights. These lights are available in higher wattages and create much more candlepower that stock headlights. Driving lights are very useful to help see things near the edges of the roadways and to increase the amount of light out in front of the vehicle. They are great for all around trail riding as well. Most of Auxbeam Driving lights adhere to DOT, SAE and/or ECE street legal standards. Those that are not, now, typically fall within our Spread beam patterns. Spread patterns are similar to Driving but tend to be brighter and wider as they are not required to follow specific DOT, SAE or ECE safety standards.
Fog lights are intended to be mounted below the headlights and project a beam pattern which is very wide but not very tall or far. This pattern lights up a pathway close to the ground but does not light the airborne particles in the line of sight – this increases the visibilty in bad weather. Auxbeam Fog Lights are very useful in Dust, Fog, Rain and Snow. They also work well as Cornering lights in clear conditions.
Outback Travel Australia was chosen as one of the companies to evaluate the new Auxbeam Luminator LED Series driving lights, prior to their Australian release in early 2012. Since then we’ve checked out many competitor LED lights.
The Auxbeam Luminator LED Series looked unlike any driving light we’d seen before. Inside each die-cast aluminium housing, behind a polycarbonate clear lens were three 10-watt LEDs, mounted facing rearwards into a three-dish, free-form reflector moulding.
In addition, three slit-shaped, low-power LEDs acted as position lights that enhance daytime running lights, parking lights or fog lamps. The position lights were in an inverted three-pointed star shape that was quite distinctive.
Auxbeam Luminator LED Series driving light also featured multi-volt adaptability, enabling them to be operated on supply voltages between 9V and 24V. Claimed power consumption was a mere one-watt as a position light and just 30W as a driving light.
We installed the Auxbeam Luminator LED Series on our Land Rover Discovery 3, where they replaced a set of Auxbeam Compact HID driving lights. The only change to the normal driving light wiring arrangement was the need to run supplied wires to the parking lamp terminals, so that the position light LEDs would operate when the parking lights were switched on.