Advanced Driving Hub

So can anyone explain why if doing 80mph on a clear dry sunny road is so dangerous that it's worthy of enforcement/reeducation, there's absolutely no effort to prosecute all the morons driving around in fog with no lights or just DRLs on? Tell me that's not more dangerous

Did a dual and mway trip today, in heavy rain with lots of spray.

Noted that:
- grey cars don't, apparently, need lights in these conditions
- rear fog lights allow you to see sufficiently far ahead to travel at 80mph

The latest highway code SHOULD have said wipers on lights on, instead of the Dutch grip nonsense (not holding the door securely to my mind).

vanman wrote:The latest highway code SHOULD have said wipers on lights on, instead of the Dutch grip nonsense (not holding the door securely to my mind).

The times when I feel the need to over-ride my automatic lights are very few and far between. They even seem to cope with fog these days.

When I see an unlit vehicle with lit vehicles following it makes me appreciate the value of daylight running lights and auto lights.

But I try to remember that I don't want to hit unlit pedestrians in dark raincoats.

waremark wrote:The times when I feel the need to over-ride my automatic lights are very few and far between. They even seem to cope with fog these days.

The thing I dislike about my auto headlights is I can't switch to main beam on empty side streets with lots of parked cars in town. It ignores the stalk position, unless set to manual

GTR1400MAN wrote:

waremark wrote:The times when I feel the need to over-ride my automatic lights are very few and far between. They even seem to cope with fog these days.

The thing I dislike about my auto headlights is I can't switch to main beam on empty side streets with lots of parked cars in town. It ignores the stalk position, unless set to manual

Understood - of cars with adaptive lights which I drive, a Merc is like that, a BMW and a Jag make it very easy to override.

waremark wrote:automatic lights

I find, when they're shining in my direction, they rather too often don't dip quickly enough. I mean, when they do dip it's very quick, but that the point at which they should dip can be well before that point at which they do.

I've found that some oncoming headlights dip amazingly quickly once they've blinded me and I've become sufficiently annoyed to flash my main beams, much quicker than I would expect a human to respond.

Presumably autodip can't identify pedestrians so won't do the courtesy of not dazzling them?

When Pioneering pioneered DRLs, and until the noughties, Volvo* it included dipped headlamps and lit tail lights, which satisfied legal requirements for poor weather driving.

Now that DRLs have become mainstream (including Volvos), they seem to have been dumbed down. In particular, why don’t they include tail lights, is it just to save an additional 0.0000001mpg in emissions testing?

I know that even at the front DRLs are not same as headlights and hence do **not meet legal requirements in bad weather. But the reality is that’s what people will use and they’re a lot better than nothing, if only the other end lit up too.

* Re Volvo, that caused problems too. A pub acquaintance of mine, back in 1980s, drove out in front of a Volvo after it flashed its lights, which, to most people means, “Please drive out”. Only it hadn’t flashed it lights, it had merely rolled over a big pothole, causing the beam to fluctuate. The Volvo driver was in fact completely inattentive. Crunch.

** Never been sure as I never drive abroad…. is it just the UK that mandates actual headlamps in poor visibility, or all/some other countries too?

Another Bill wrote:I know that even at the front DRLs are not same as headlights and hence do **not meet legal requirements in bad weather. But the reality is that’s what people will use and they’re a lot better than nothing, if only the other end lit up too.

While better than nothing, I still don't understand why we aren't prosecuting people who are too thick to understand the limitations of the vehicle they are driving and not prepared to spend a minimal amount of effort on the activity of driving

Maybe you even "let them off" with a reeducation course