Might we have seen HID as what we see LED as today.....

I think the most important word you said is "today". The technologies are different, but so are the marketing strategies of today vs. the times when HID really came to the world

The world is lit by LED, and there come HID :



If fair marketing :

HID will steadily penetrate in, getting to the applications it suits. Installations of the respective application will use HID if the technology really is better, installations of other applications will stay LED or whatever else

When comparing HID vs LED, all aspects of performance will be taken into account - Optics, Spectrum, Efficiency, Maintenance requirements, .. In the end the choice for each case will be the result of such considerations



If fraudulent marketing :

HID will quiclky spread as "the new light source" everywhere, with unrealistic claims that everyone spreads but noone checks - "everyone knows that HID is superior on account of.." sort of claims

Based on such claims and lack of understanding of what determines performance, it will be pushed everywhere - even where it will fail delivering the expected performance. Any consideration will be driven by false "equivalence claims", which came along with HID in order to cut some corners and make it appear better than it really is, or alternatively, discredit LED in different ways

I still prefer HID in any case... But I still give credits to LED technology. It develops rather quickly, that's why there is no need to spend too much sum to replace the existing HID units.

The technology deserves its credits to good and to bad

I cannot say anything good at all about how it is promoted however, and this starts with the various "equivalence claims"

I was born in France, so I remember as a kid when everyone drove their car with yellow headlights. My father explained be that contrast gave a better night vision and reduced eye fatigue; then I read the same thing in an old Philips book about automotive lighting, from the 1960's.
In thr 1990's came the "golden white" headlight bulbs (we called them "lampes gold", in English) which has a light yellow glass with blue reflection, that were supposed to meet the regulations while offering better vision due to the whiter light. People said it was the best. Then came the white incandescent headlights that every country in the world was using, people said it was way better for night vision and eye fatigue. Then came the "bluish" HID's, and once again blah blah blah the best blah blah blah.

So, if HID was invented after LED:
- more efficiency due to the focused beam;
- hey! great choice of tints (orange sodium, white sodium, all tints for metal halides, hey! look at this nice greenish light of clear mercury, so good for the trees);
- healthy light without harmful blue peak in the spectrum;
- more ecological, since you can recycle glass and mercury.

Cities and public places would have replaced the dim and dirty led arrays by new, clean and bright HID's of all types. Collectors would claim that the CRI of led is better, but nobody cared especially their family.

I was born in France, so I remember as a kid when everyone drove their car with yellow headlights. My father explained be that contrast gave a better night vision and reduced eye fatigue;

The other explanation sounds way more plausible, given the fact how the headlights evolved:
In the late 30's France was threatened by Germany, so some measure allowing as early warning as possible was required.
As the main logistic of the military was car transport, the requirement was to identify German cars and distinguish them from the local French ones.
As the invasion was expected to happen at night, someone got an idea to have all French cars different headlight color. And the clearly different color without loosing that much light is then the yellow. So the German cars were very easy to identify by their white headlights.
Obviously the real reason for such measure was supposed to be kept secret, so the cover story abut the "better visibility".

After the war the original need disappeared, but another came: Protect the French car industry from imports. The need to develop yellow lights was not that easy to justify when only low sale volumes are expected when introducing new brand was quite strong barrier, at least against smaller companies and/or cheaper product lines (Beetle,...). So the requirement for yellow headlights was kept in place, with the same "cover story", till the end of the century. In fact the only motivation to lift up that requirement was the "open market" idea, quite pushed through the Europe by France at that time, while with that yellow headlight law it was quite difficult for the French diplomacy to push those "open market" agreements, mainly towards Germany...