There's some evidence out there which shows that while DRLs can contribute towards reductions in car vs car collisions in certain road layouts (IIRC, generally those where you have a refuge in the centre of the road to allow traffic to turn across oncoming traffic) they can also contribute to increasing the number of collisions between cars and pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles and actually cause more casualties than they prevent.

There's also the fact that lights have successfully been used during the last half century or more as camouflage on planes, tanks and battleships, and don't always mean that the user is more visible.

Indeed. If every car in the country, that runs into millions of course, had their daylight lights on all the time then tiny becomes tiny x n. And that equals lots and lots when you multiply it by 365.25.

Further, the point I was making wasn't about carbon footprints but stupid MPs.

This is a great post.

anyone wondered why are they called daylight running lights? I mean surely daylight driving lights should be more appropriate?

The majority of DRL's can currently be disabled. Some through the dash controls, others require the plug-in of some diagnostic equipment.
The reason for this is that 99% of cars fitted with DRL's at the moment - it's not compulsory for them to be on.
The requirement was on vehicles requiring type-approval from January 2011. 99% of cars currently on the road received their type-approval long before January 2011 and so there is no problem switching them off.
Any "brand new" car released now (not facelifts, not re-hases - genuine new cars) will have DRL's and it will not be possible to switch them off.

Anyone noticed that VW appear to be fitting poor quality bulbs in their cars, every other new Van, Golf, Passat appears to have only bulb lit up, or is it an energy saving thing going on ??

errrr and?

you should become an mp. You appear to have all the skills.

all new cars are meant to have them, but idont know if its every brand new model car, for instance the new focus, anything below the titanium doesnt have DRLs but the tit with xenons does.

No, I'm not. You're mistaken.


In my last post on this thread I mentioned that there's "evidence out there" with regard to both positive and negative effects of DRLs. Much of it is debatable. Some of the evidence points to DRLs on cars adding up to "mask" smaller, darker objects, but to be fair, there's around four decades worth of research from various countries, much of which is hotly contested in interested circles and further studies - you're free to look it all up if you want to.

The Austrians did a four year experiment with dipped beam headlights, and couldn't measure any difference between having them on 24/7, or only when needed in poor visability, so repealed the law requiring them to be on.

I dislike daylight running lights, especially the audi ones.

The led types give a blue haze in my auto dip rear view mirror .... and I don't like that either.

All I can see this achieving is the more vunerable road users will become more vunerable, because they aren't using a light source (peds, cyclists etc)

Even worse, in the Nigel hate scheme, are the 60 watt turning lights that seem to be the fashion now, like a fog like but not a fog light, and come on with the indicator to light up around the corner....... supposedly.