[eigenhombre]

This is a pet peeve of mine, so when a headlight went out a few weeks ago I asked my mechanic about bulb options. He said he had no other choices for me, so now I am part of the problem too.

Seems like a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation / use case for regulation....

[Zak]

There are already regulations forbidding the use of unapproved LED retrofits in housings designed for incandescent bulbs in most countries. The fact that your mechanic gets away with installing them, and you get away with driving your now-illegal car shows how well they are enforced.

Unless your car's design is particularly evil (a real possibility), changing a headlight bulb is usually easy to do yourself, and approved, incandescent headlight bulbs are easy to source most places.

[operatingthetan]

There are LED replacement bulbs that mimic the light emitting pattern of halogen and also are not massively bright. Those are fine and cops are not going after people with that kind of thing.

[Melatonic]

There are a lot of options if you search online