I'll accept that. Blocking the light / lowering the output can't change the fact that the light is passing through an inferior lens. I will officially stop complaining here and now about too many lumens on these bulbs.

I will say that on Friday, I took advantage of the fact that it was raining steadily (the worst case scenario for my eyes), and took a 12 or so mile ride through the darkest, narrowest wooded roads near me. My complaints not withstanding, the setup was distinctly better than with the 45W halogens, no question. Halfway through the ride, I pulled over and very crudely lowered the aim of both lamps against a wall. So now I'm running an aim significantly lower than it should be. Naturally, the long distance illumination suffers on low beam. The positive tradeoff is that I'm getting less reflected back at me from road signs. And presumably less is being scattered into the eyes of oncoming traffic, which is pretty damn important. No driver has expressed an issue, but that's a pretty poor test. So at the moment, my headlights are something I can live with, assuming the light now aimed at the ground closer to me doesn't bother me when driving in the dry (have yet do drive at night since then). This can get me by until I fix the situation properly with E-codes, or whatever. Whatever meaning an LED projector retrofit. I hate to change up the look of the car, but this would be dramatically less expensive than E codes. Here's one attempt I found that doesn't look too bad. Again, I'd prefer stock (or especially E-codes), but I have the champagne taste / beer budget problem, and functionality wins. Pic in post is of the finished conversion. https://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=301137