Letter: Drivers should only use dipped headlights
Monday 24th January 2011, 5:59AM GMT.
Letter: I am delighted to have received one or two critical letters regarding my opinion that drivers do not use dipped headlights in adverse weather conditions or during dawn and dusk. It proves the letters page is read.
I proposed that the law should be changed to ensure that dipped headlights should be used continuously and lights on all new vehicles fitted to come on when the vehicle is started.
I quoted Rule 226 of the Highway Code and suggested this should be changed.
I can give you a good reason for this. As I approached a junction with the A5 recently during typically dull conditions – visibility approximately 100 metres as in Rule 226, I looked right, then left, then right again and to be on the safe side left again.
The A5 appeared to be safe to cross when out of the mist a car approached without headlights – travelling, I estimated, at 60mph.
Now this approaching speed equates to 88ft per second, leaving me with just three seconds to safely cross a three-lane carriageway.
My argument is that if the approaching vehicle had used dipped headlights or the distance in Rule 226 increased to say 215 metres or even 295 metres as in the Department of Transports Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, my safe crossing time would have been increased considerably.
Now if Mr Smith, of Pendeford, is worried about my lack of driving experience, I am pleased to inform him that I am a bus driver with probably many more safe historical miles travelled than he will ever have.
Peter Hassall
Shifnal
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Peter, I quite agree with you. The amount of times I have started to make a safe attempt to overtake a slow vehicle on the A41 only to abandon the attempt upon seeing (for example) a grey car approaching in the opposite side of the road on a grey morning, against a grey, road and grey sky. These drivers think that they can see perfectly well themselves so thats ok. I always drive with my lights on (dipped now – I do have a grey car!). I often wonder when I see reports of headon collisions weather the car overtaking has hit a car with no lights on in similar conditions, and yet the driver overtaken gets 100% of the blame. No one would over take if they actually saw a car coming at a speed and distance they could not overtake in.
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Isn’t this the law in much of Europe and North America? Using a Canadian hire care, we noted that the lights automatically came on when the car started regardless of conditions. Also there was a speed indicator – very annoying! – that chimed, loudly and continuously when you went over the speed limit. It’s amazing how quickly you slow down when it just won’t stop.
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I was pleased to discover that my current car has “driving lights”. They’re not headlights, they’re a separate strip of lights under the main cluster. I like them because they help to make me more visible at all times, but I had to enable them in the car’s settings menu as the default setting was “off”. I think they should be incorporated into all new cars. They’re not a substitute for dipped headlights in dim or foggy conditions, of course.
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By Spring 2011 all new vehicles will have to have Daytime Running Lights fitted. Although daytime running lights (DRL) seem a safety benefit, giving motorists higher visibility, many road safety groups, including RoSPA, argue that motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians will be in more danger as the glare could be a distraction, and make non-DRL users less visible.
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I wasn’t aware of that.
What glare though? I don’t get that bit. Many motorcyclists ride with their headlight on during the day anyway. Sometimes on main beam, it seems.
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Personally, I have always preferred a Sour Cream Dip.
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“Personally, I have always preferred a Sour Cream Dip”
Pathetic response.
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Interesting opinion KarenK, but driving is a serious subject and driving incorrectly, poorly or selfishly can have dire consequences.
Many people don’t have any interest in driving and it shows in their poor roadcraft. I think you need to have an interest in a subject or activity to be particularly good or even competant at it.
I am not hacking on you KarenK, but you do highlight a point.
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I think all cars should have the lights on automatically as soon as the doors have been unlocked or at least when the key is in the ignition. I automatically put my lights on as soon as I get in the car.
John Lausanne Suisse
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i quite agree but—-what about the person
doing 60-plus no concern for anyone else then
lights or not so it wouldnt have made any difference to peters dangerous dilemma
there is also a growing trend o driving in the dark WITHOUT lights at all if that isnt a case of the careless attitude growing by the week the people i see are not coffin-dodgers either
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I often wonder why the police don’t pull these people over, who drive without headlights in dim conditions, I see plenty of them, so surely the police do too but I’ve never seen one being stopped but you hear of people being stopped for no seat belt, which is far less dangerous to other road users.
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The recklessly misinformed and selfish view that powerful LED ”Running Lights’ and headlights improve safety in all conditions urgently needs nipping in the bud.
Particularly now manufacturers are noticeably treating common sense and the rule books with contempt in their clamouring to outdo one another with ever more powerful lights.
German cars and the new Vauxhall Insignia are the worst offenders, especially the latter which ought be outlawed or subjected to an urgent safety recall to have its light adjusted.
The plain fact is that, yes, a bright light grabs your attention but lets not forget we are also talking about movement here, and we need assess our own travel with those movements of those around us, including those such as pedestrians who the last time I checked did not have xenon headlights fitted as standard.
LEDs and powerful headlights make distract and disorientate, they obscure indicators, they make it generally tiring and more stressful so increasing the risk of accidents generally throughout a journey, they blind you as you need to judge when to pull out onto a t-junction or roundabout, they make it harder to judge the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles when judging if to overtake or when to change lanes on a motorway (especially in light rain when sidelights as opposed to full headlights are the preferred lights), road markings and signs and cyclists and pedestrians are harder to spot behind the sea of glare too.
All in all blasting each other full in the face of blinding headlights is wrong, highly dangerous and the cult of doing so and those who follow it and encourage it should be prosecuted.
See also http://www.dadrl.org.uk and http://www.blindedbixenon.co.uk
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I’d just add (aside from pointing out my stray “make” in the middle of that somewhere!) that LED style lights such as on the Audis are great IF and ONLY IF its raining during the day. All cars should have them, FOR USE IN THE RAIN … but Audi and for that matter all other manufacturers jumping on this Dangerous Running Light fad have quite forgotten that in the circumstances when you’d need lights on at the front that you’d also need them at the back.
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