Did someone ever flag you down and say "you blinded me bro and I almost crashed im calling the cops"
How often do you stop, flag someone down and tell them, "You blinded me bro, and I almost crashed. I'm calling the cops," to someone who is driving with their high beams on? Never? Yeah.
No one has ever flashed me. No cop has ever pulled me over. I think my lights look good. I need that much light to drive around in a part of the world that has more ambient light even on the darkest nights than people living outside of major metropolitan areas get during a full moon.
A compilation of the worst excuses I've ever heard about HIDs. You know. Most people aren't going to flash you no matter what. They just put up with it and make sarcastic remarks to themselves about how much of an idiot you are. That's the way people are. Most people hate any type of confrontation.
Also, as to your argument about flickering cut-off. Where I live, we have bumpy roads, rolling hills, and a whole lot of nothing to block the light cars cast, I see HID flicker reflected in the dust from gravel roads and all numbers of other things. I'll gladly take that slightly annoying flicker over the full-blown blindness that bad HID retrofits cause when I don't hold my hand up in my windshield to block the light they are scattering.
The only people here defending the constant blinding light over the momentary flickering are people who have HID retrofit bulbs in stock halogen housings, which are coincidentally the only people who ever think that they get a good beam pattern from those bulbs...
Also, remember, anyone who drives in areas that don't have the crazy amounts of ambient light you do in or near major metropolitan areas really DOES get blinded by that light. Our eyes have to adjust to much darker conditions, I mean, have you ever seen the difference in the night sky between where you are and somewhere like where I am at? I mean hell, the term light pollution was practically invented for the east coast.
This is the difference between your sky and my sky, albeit made artificially.
It is just that much darker here at night.