The arguments against current EU proposals to make Volvo-style daytime running lights (DRL) compulsory have just taken an environmental flavour.
According to campaigners against DRL, daytime running lights on a Volvo need 170W of electrical power but, after taking into account engine heat losses, mechanical losses, drive belt losses and alternator losses, they need about 970W of primary energy. The result, say campaigners, is that each vehicle with headlights on emits 0.25kg of CO2/hr.
Further, they argue that, if adopted, daytime lights will add 1.85 million tonnes annually of CO2 into the UK's atmosphere. The UK overall emits around 560 million tonnes of CO2 annually.
During 2005/06 the Carbon Trust UK saved 3.9 million tonnes of CO2 using an army of 250 energy surveyors. The use of daytime running lights will negate 50 per cent of these hard won environmental gains, said the Drivers against Daytime Running Lights (DADRL) campaign.
As other countries will be forced to follow suit, a decision by the EC to mandate daytime lights will have untenable environmental consequences across the world, said DADRL.
As a compromise, the EC has the option of permitting low power 13W non-glaring dedicated daytime lights on new vehicles but then intend to make the existing 200 million vehicles in the EU use full power headlights in good daylight, said DADRL's UK co-ordinator Roy Milnes.
For existing vehicles, the EC could allow the rarely used (and often misused) fog lights on many vehicles to accept 13W lamps. On vehicles without auxiliary lamps, they could permit the fitting "by competent persons" of two regulation-sized light emitting diode discs.
Low power lamps would minimise the environmental impact yet provide a good degree of conspicuity, reckoned Milnes.
The deadline for requests for comment on the issue is Friday this week -- see link below.
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