Discussion
I thought this might be appropriate with the night drawing in.
Night driving
In some ways, driving at night is easier than during the day. Traffic is usually lighter and approaching vehicles can often be seen earlier on winding roads. But, despite that, every mile you drive at night carries twice the accident risk of every daytime mile. On top of that, collisions that occur in the dark are twice as likely to have serious or fatal results as those that occur in daylight. So any journey at night carries four times as much risk of being killed or seriously injured as the same journey in daylight.
Typical risks
You're likely to be less alert at night, especially at late hours when you'd normally be asleep. And you're more at risk from other drivers who may drive into you when they fall asleep at the wheel, or who may be under the influence of alcohol. But the biggest and most obvious difficulty is having reduced visibility. Not surprisingly, many drivers find night driving particularly stressful.
Compensating for reduced visibility
Driving at night needn't be more stressful or dangerous than driving in daylight. It won't be if you make the necessary adjustments to your driving to cope safely with reduced visibility. You need to make the optimum use of:
* your sense of sight - particularly by maximising and protecting your "night vision"
* your car's lights
* the restricted visual information available to you
Night vision
Make sure that you're able to see as well as possible at night. Have your eyes tested regularly. If you wear spectacles or contact lenses, they should be really clean. Don't wear tinted lenses at night, as they reduce light transmission. Keep your car windows clean, particularly the inside of the windscreen.
Allow time to adjust
It takes time for your eyes to adjust to low light. So, if you've just walked out of a brightly-lit building, wait a minute or two before driving away.
Adjust internal lighting
Most cars have a dimmer for the instrument panel lights. Adjust the illumination to balance the lighting outside. The right setting for well-lit town streets is too bright for unlit country roads.
Avoid dazzle
Take steps to protect your night vision and avoid being dazzled. When you meet oncoming headlights look along the nearside kerb. If the lights are out of adjustment or have been left on full beam, squint until they've passed. Be particularly careful to look away from oncoming lights at hill crests, where even dipped lights are angled up off the road.
Dip your interior mirror in good time to avoid dazzle from behind. Either tilt door mirrors or move your head slightly. Remember to reset your mirrors when the source of dazzle has gone.
If, despite taking precautions, you are dazzled, slow right down or stop until your eyesight returns to normal. Never retaliate by dazzling the other driver: two dazzled drivers are far more dangerous than one.
If your car has adjustable instrument panel illumination, experiment with the effect it has on your night vision. Particularly notice how dim you can set it and still be able to read the instruments comfortably on unlit country roads.
Do you find dazzle a particular problem? If so, next time you're driving at night notice where you look as vehicles approach. Do you find yourself looking at the lights? No wonder you're dazzled. Many people find approaching lights almost mesmerising, and they feel compelled to look at them. Try looking along the nearside verge instead. Notice that you can still judge the position of the approaching vehicles with your peripheral vision - but without the dazzle.
Highway Code Reference
Vision: rule 35
Using lights
Keep your headlights clean. Dirt reduces the light output and spoils the focus. Unless your car has self-levelling suspension, remember to adjust the angle of the headlights to compensate for any load in the boot.
Maximise the range
Even where there's street lighting always use your headlights - whenever possible on full beam. Only use dipped beam to avoid dazzling other road users; there's no point in limiting the range of your lights unnecessarily.
Many drivers dip their headlights much too soon. By staying on full beam until just before your lights would become dazzling you illuminate more of the middle ground between you and the other road user.
Driving on dipped beam
Before you dip, reduce your speed if necessary so that you're able to stop within the range of your dipped headlights. Note any hazards before you lose sight of them. You can get a quick glimpse of a hazard in the middle ground without dazzling the other driver by using a very quick flash of full beam.
When you're following another vehicle, keep the tips of your headlight beams on the road, not on the back of the vehicle. At very low speeds, this may entail keeping a longer than normal following distance.
Undipping
When meeting approaching vehicles at night, many drivers wait until they've gone completely past the other vehicle before switching from dipped to full beam. This is unnecessary and has two disadvantages:
* You're limiting the range of your headlights when there's no possibility of dazzling anyone.
* By comparison with the relatively high level of light entering your eyes from the oncoming vehicle before it passes, the view beyond your dipped headlight beams after you've passed looks like a "black hole"; this sudden drop in light level causes temporary "night blindness."
You can switch to full beam without dazzling the oncoming driver just before you come alongside the other vehicle, when the other driver is at about 45 degrees to your direction of travel. The intense part of the main beam of your headlights will then be thrown past, not at, the other driver. The scattered light visible at 45 degrees is no more on main beam than it is on dipped beam. Switching to full beam as early as you safely and considerately can has two advantages:
* You minimise the time that your forward vision is limited.
* By flooding the road ahead with light while the oncoming headlights are still visible in your peripheral vision you maintain a fairly even light level; this helps to preserve your night vision.
Bends
Similarly, you need to think about the angle between your headlight beams and oncoming drivers at bends. Your lights can dazzle only when they're pointing towards another driver. If an oncoming driver doesn't come in line with your direction of travel, or cross your path, you probably won't need to dip at all.
This may be the case on fairly tight right-hand bends. If you pass in the middle of the bend, your lights will stay directed at the outside of the bend and never point towards the other driver. On a wider radius right-hand bend the oncoming vehicle will gradually move towards your headlight beams and you will need to dip, but this will occur when the vehicle is a good deal closer than it would be on a straight road. By staying on full beam as long as possible, you actually help the oncoming driver by illuminating the outside of the bend.
On left-hand bends oncoming vehicles must inevitably cross your headlight beams, and you do need to dip. But even here you may be able to dip quite late. Watch as the angle between your path and the oncoming vehicle's narrows, and dip just before the other driver enters the area where your headlights are illuminating the other side of the road.
Rear lights
Keep the lenses of rear lights clean. You may need to clean them during a long journey in wet weather (when you stop for a break) as road dirt can accumulate quite quickly and obscure the lights.
Use rear fog lights only when visibility is seriously reduced (when you can't see more than 100 metres). It's illegal to use them at other times. Make sure you haven't left them on by mistake; on many cars the dashboard warning lights for rear fog lights are not particularly conspicuous.
If you're stationary with a vehicle behind, take care not to dazzle its driver with your brake lights, foglights or indicator. Switch off fog lights and indicators while you're waiting, and use the handbrake rather than holding the car on the footbrake.
Parking
Observe legal requirements (as described in The Highway Code) regarding the use of lights when parking. When you park at the roadside, make sure your car faces in the direction of the traffic flow: i.e. with the left-hand side against the kerb except on a one-way street.
When you're driving at night, notice whether you're making the best use of your lights.
Do you sometimes leave your headlights dipped where there's no possibility of dazzling other road users (perhaps on quiet suburban streets)? What do you gain from that? What would it be like to regard full beam as the normal setting of your headlights, and to use dipped beam only where consideration for other road users requires it?
Notice how you're timing the dipping and undipping of your headlights. Are you dipping well before you could dazzle others, or dipping where you don't need to (such as at some right-hand bends)? Could you preserve your night vision by being a little quicker on the trigger when undipping your lights as you pass oncoming cars?
When you're stationary with a vehicle behind, do you imagine what it's like for the other driver to sit behind you? Do you switch off unnecessary signals and use the handbrake in preference to the footbrake?
When you park on the road at night, do you always make sure you're on the correct side of the road, and do you always use lights when required to by law?
Highway Code Reference
VEHICLE LIGHTS: rules 131 and 132
Parking at night: rule 143
Visual information
When you're driving in daylight, particularly on country roads, you use quite a lot of "contextual" information to help you to plan ahead. That is, you look for visual indications that allow you to judge the general nature of the environment you're about to drive through. For example, you might see a distant line of hills and expect steep gradients and sharp bends. You might see a church spire a couple of miles ahead and anticipate that you'll soon be driving through a village. Or you might see a line of trees that joins with your road in the distance and expect to find a junction there.
At night, especially on roads with no street lighting, most of this information is unavailable. You have to build your perception of your environment from a few elements that are visible within a corridor little wider than the road and a few hundred yards long - in other words, from whatever is illuminated by your headlights.
Maximum safe speed
The main conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is so obvious it shouldn't need stating. But like all those other woods we can't see for the trees, it won't do any harm to spell it out. Your maximum safe speed at night is often slower than it is on the same stretch of road in daylight. What is it that seems to compel so many drivers to try to prove otherwise?
Stopping distances
The golden rule of always being able to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear is of vital importance at night and, again, rather obvious. What's not so obvious is that overall stopping distances are likely to be longer at night. It's not your braking distance from any given speed that changes; it's your thinking distance.
You can't react to a hazard until you've recognised it as a hazard. Often obstructions are difficult to identify because their outlines are broken by confusing shadows. Or they are dark and non-reflective, such as fallen branches. Poor road surfaces are hard to spot on undulating roads when your lights pick out the crests and cast long shadows across the dips. There may be a broken down vehicle with no lights and dirty reflectors just round the next bend. The flashing beacons intended to mark a hole in the road may have been taken by a student to provide strobe lighting at his next party. Cyclists or pedestrians might have no lights and dark clothing. Coping with these visual difficulties can easily double the time it takes you to react to hazard.
Extracting maximum information
Considering how little information you often have available to you, it's vital that you make the best use of what you've got. For example, many roads are fitted with coloured reflecting road studs (cat's eyes). Do you know what the different colours mean? Road markings, such as hazard lines and double white line systems, take on particular significance when you can't see hazards beyond the range of your lights. And did you know that the spacing of cat's eyes corresponds to the type of white line?
* Centre lines - one cat's eye every other gap
* Hazard lines - one cat's eye every gap
* Double white lines - twice as many cat's eyes as hazard lines
Overtaking
Overtaking at night is fairly straightforward on dual-carriageways, but even here it has dangers not encountered in daylight. Even if there is no traffic approaching on the other carriageway, you still need to drive on dipped beam from when you start to close on the vehicle to be overtaken until you're alongside it. So any debris or other hazards in the overtaking lane are difficult to spot.
Overtaking on unlit single carriageways is particularly hazardous unless you can be sure that the road is straight and free of hazards such as junctions for a long way ahead. Many stretches of road that might present good opportunities for overtaking in daylight just aren't safe to use at night.
Judging the distance and speed of oncoming traffic is much harder at night. We tend to use clues such as the intensity of headlights (becoming more intense as they get nearer) and the distance between the headlights (moving further apart as they get nearer). But a vehicle with relatively dim, closely spaced headlights (such as an old Mini) could look as far away as a wide car with bright headlights yet be only half the distance.
The only safe rule of thumb is: If in any doubt whatsoever, don't overtake.
Sometimes it's useful to be reminded of things we take for granted. You might like to try this experiment.
Keeping your speed well down, drive for a while on a quiet country road on dipped beam. Notice how little visual information you have available to judge the nature of the road ahead - that's why you must drive slowly! Then switch to full beam and see how much more visual information you have.
Bearing in mind that your safe speed is limited by what you can see clearly, consider whether you always drive at a safe speed at night, particularly when you have to drive on dipped beam.
Think of a few near misses you've had in the dark. As you cast your mind back and relive each experience, ask yourself:
Are you taken by surprise by something that you don't see until you're almost on top of it - are you failing to collect information early enough?
Are you misinterpreting the information you have; for example by misjudging the speed and distance of an approaching vehicle?
Did you expect to take that long to process the information before deciding that it's hazardous?
Are you really driving at such a speed that you can stop comfortably within the distance you can see to be clear?
Highway Code References
Speed limits: rule 56
LINES AND LANES ALONG THE ROAD: rule 87
OVERTAKING: rule 99
Motorway road studs: rule 174
Taken from here:
www.donpalmer.co.uk/handbook/part4.htm#nightdrive
Thank you Don. [
]
Night driving
In some ways, driving at night is easier than during the day. Traffic is usually lighter and approaching vehicles can often be seen earlier on winding roads. But, despite that, every mile you drive at night carries twice the accident risk of every daytime mile. On top of that, collisions that occur in the dark are twice as likely to have serious or fatal results as those that occur in daylight. So any journey at night carries four times as much risk of being killed or seriously injured as the same journey in daylight.
Typical risks
You're likely to be less alert at night, especially at late hours when you'd normally be asleep. And you're more at risk from other drivers who may drive into you when they fall asleep at the wheel, or who may be under the influence of alcohol. But the biggest and most obvious difficulty is having reduced visibility. Not surprisingly, many drivers find night driving particularly stressful.
Compensating for reduced visibility
Driving at night needn't be more stressful or dangerous than driving in daylight. It won't be if you make the necessary adjustments to your driving to cope safely with reduced visibility. You need to make the optimum use of:
* your sense of sight - particularly by maximising and protecting your "night vision"
* your car's lights
* the restricted visual information available to you
Night vision
Make sure that you're able to see as well as possible at night. Have your eyes tested regularly. If you wear spectacles or contact lenses, they should be really clean. Don't wear tinted lenses at night, as they reduce light transmission. Keep your car windows clean, particularly the inside of the windscreen.
Allow time to adjust
It takes time for your eyes to adjust to low light. So, if you've just walked out of a brightly-lit building, wait a minute or two before driving away.
Adjust internal lighting
Most cars have a dimmer for the instrument panel lights. Adjust the illumination to balance the lighting outside. The right setting for well-lit town streets is too bright for unlit country roads.
Avoid dazzle
Take steps to protect your night vision and avoid being dazzled. When you meet oncoming headlights look along the nearside kerb. If the lights are out of adjustment or have been left on full beam, squint until they've passed. Be particularly careful to look away from oncoming lights at hill crests, where even dipped lights are angled up off the road.
Dip your interior mirror in good time to avoid dazzle from behind. Either tilt door mirrors or move your head slightly. Remember to reset your mirrors when the source of dazzle has gone.
If, despite taking precautions, you are dazzled, slow right down or stop until your eyesight returns to normal. Never retaliate by dazzling the other driver: two dazzled drivers are far more dangerous than one.
If your car has adjustable instrument panel illumination, experiment with the effect it has on your night vision. Particularly notice how dim you can set it and still be able to read the instruments comfortably on unlit country roads.
Do you find dazzle a particular problem? If so, next time you're driving at night notice where you look as vehicles approach. Do you find yourself looking at the lights? No wonder you're dazzled. Many people find approaching lights almost mesmerising, and they feel compelled to look at them. Try looking along the nearside verge instead. Notice that you can still judge the position of the approaching vehicles with your peripheral vision - but without the dazzle.
Highway Code Reference
Vision: rule 35
Using lights
Keep your headlights clean. Dirt reduces the light output and spoils the focus. Unless your car has self-levelling suspension, remember to adjust the angle of the headlights to compensate for any load in the boot.
Maximise the range
Even where there's street lighting always use your headlights - whenever possible on full beam. Only use dipped beam to avoid dazzling other road users; there's no point in limiting the range of your lights unnecessarily.
Many drivers dip their headlights much too soon. By staying on full beam until just before your lights would become dazzling you illuminate more of the middle ground between you and the other road user.
Driving on dipped beam
Before you dip, reduce your speed if necessary so that you're able to stop within the range of your dipped headlights. Note any hazards before you lose sight of them. You can get a quick glimpse of a hazard in the middle ground without dazzling the other driver by using a very quick flash of full beam.
When you're following another vehicle, keep the tips of your headlight beams on the road, not on the back of the vehicle. At very low speeds, this may entail keeping a longer than normal following distance.
Undipping
When meeting approaching vehicles at night, many drivers wait until they've gone completely past the other vehicle before switching from dipped to full beam. This is unnecessary and has two disadvantages:
* You're limiting the range of your headlights when there's no possibility of dazzling anyone.
* By comparison with the relatively high level of light entering your eyes from the oncoming vehicle before it passes, the view beyond your dipped headlight beams after you've passed looks like a "black hole"; this sudden drop in light level causes temporary "night blindness."
You can switch to full beam without dazzling the oncoming driver just before you come alongside the other vehicle, when the other driver is at about 45 degrees to your direction of travel. The intense part of the main beam of your headlights will then be thrown past, not at, the other driver. The scattered light visible at 45 degrees is no more on main beam than it is on dipped beam. Switching to full beam as early as you safely and considerately can has two advantages:
* You minimise the time that your forward vision is limited.
* By flooding the road ahead with light while the oncoming headlights are still visible in your peripheral vision you maintain a fairly even light level; this helps to preserve your night vision.
Bends
Similarly, you need to think about the angle between your headlight beams and oncoming drivers at bends. Your lights can dazzle only when they're pointing towards another driver. If an oncoming driver doesn't come in line with your direction of travel, or cross your path, you probably won't need to dip at all.
This may be the case on fairly tight right-hand bends. If you pass in the middle of the bend, your lights will stay directed at the outside of the bend and never point towards the other driver. On a wider radius right-hand bend the oncoming vehicle will gradually move towards your headlight beams and you will need to dip, but this will occur when the vehicle is a good deal closer than it would be on a straight road. By staying on full beam as long as possible, you actually help the oncoming driver by illuminating the outside of the bend.
On left-hand bends oncoming vehicles must inevitably cross your headlight beams, and you do need to dip. But even here you may be able to dip quite late. Watch as the angle between your path and the oncoming vehicle's narrows, and dip just before the other driver enters the area where your headlights are illuminating the other side of the road.
Rear lights
Keep the lenses of rear lights clean. You may need to clean them during a long journey in wet weather (when you stop for a break) as road dirt can accumulate quite quickly and obscure the lights.
Use rear fog lights only when visibility is seriously reduced (when you can't see more than 100 metres). It's illegal to use them at other times. Make sure you haven't left them on by mistake; on many cars the dashboard warning lights for rear fog lights are not particularly conspicuous.
If you're stationary with a vehicle behind, take care not to dazzle its driver with your brake lights, foglights or indicator. Switch off fog lights and indicators while you're waiting, and use the handbrake rather than holding the car on the footbrake.
Parking
Observe legal requirements (as described in The Highway Code) regarding the use of lights when parking. When you park at the roadside, make sure your car faces in the direction of the traffic flow: i.e. with the left-hand side against the kerb except on a one-way street.
When you're driving at night, notice whether you're making the best use of your lights.
Do you sometimes leave your headlights dipped where there's no possibility of dazzling other road users (perhaps on quiet suburban streets)? What do you gain from that? What would it be like to regard full beam as the normal setting of your headlights, and to use dipped beam only where consideration for other road users requires it?
Notice how you're timing the dipping and undipping of your headlights. Are you dipping well before you could dazzle others, or dipping where you don't need to (such as at some right-hand bends)? Could you preserve your night vision by being a little quicker on the trigger when undipping your lights as you pass oncoming cars?
When you're stationary with a vehicle behind, do you imagine what it's like for the other driver to sit behind you? Do you switch off unnecessary signals and use the handbrake in preference to the footbrake?
When you park on the road at night, do you always make sure you're on the correct side of the road, and do you always use lights when required to by law?
Highway Code Reference
VEHICLE LIGHTS: rules 131 and 132
Parking at night: rule 143
Visual information
When you're driving in daylight, particularly on country roads, you use quite a lot of "contextual" information to help you to plan ahead. That is, you look for visual indications that allow you to judge the general nature of the environment you're about to drive through. For example, you might see a distant line of hills and expect steep gradients and sharp bends. You might see a church spire a couple of miles ahead and anticipate that you'll soon be driving through a village. Or you might see a line of trees that joins with your road in the distance and expect to find a junction there.
At night, especially on roads with no street lighting, most of this information is unavailable. You have to build your perception of your environment from a few elements that are visible within a corridor little wider than the road and a few hundred yards long - in other words, from whatever is illuminated by your headlights.
Maximum safe speed
The main conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is so obvious it shouldn't need stating. But like all those other woods we can't see for the trees, it won't do any harm to spell it out. Your maximum safe speed at night is often slower than it is on the same stretch of road in daylight. What is it that seems to compel so many drivers to try to prove otherwise?
Stopping distances
The golden rule of always being able to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear is of vital importance at night and, again, rather obvious. What's not so obvious is that overall stopping distances are likely to be longer at night. It's not your braking distance from any given speed that changes; it's your thinking distance.
You can't react to a hazard until you've recognised it as a hazard. Often obstructions are difficult to identify because their outlines are broken by confusing shadows. Or they are dark and non-reflective, such as fallen branches. Poor road surfaces are hard to spot on undulating roads when your lights pick out the crests and cast long shadows across the dips. There may be a broken down vehicle with no lights and dirty reflectors just round the next bend. The flashing beacons intended to mark a hole in the road may have been taken by a student to provide strobe lighting at his next party. Cyclists or pedestrians might have no lights and dark clothing. Coping with these visual difficulties can easily double the time it takes you to react to hazard.
Extracting maximum information
Considering how little information you often have available to you, it's vital that you make the best use of what you've got. For example, many roads are fitted with coloured reflecting road studs (cat's eyes). Do you know what the different colours mean? Road markings, such as hazard lines and double white line systems, take on particular significance when you can't see hazards beyond the range of your lights. And did you know that the spacing of cat's eyes corresponds to the type of white line?
* Centre lines - one cat's eye every other gap
* Hazard lines - one cat's eye every gap
* Double white lines - twice as many cat's eyes as hazard lines
Overtaking
Overtaking at night is fairly straightforward on dual-carriageways, but even here it has dangers not encountered in daylight. Even if there is no traffic approaching on the other carriageway, you still need to drive on dipped beam from when you start to close on the vehicle to be overtaken until you're alongside it. So any debris or other hazards in the overtaking lane are difficult to spot.
Overtaking on unlit single carriageways is particularly hazardous unless you can be sure that the road is straight and free of hazards such as junctions for a long way ahead. Many stretches of road that might present good opportunities for overtaking in daylight just aren't safe to use at night.
Judging the distance and speed of oncoming traffic is much harder at night. We tend to use clues such as the intensity of headlights (becoming more intense as they get nearer) and the distance between the headlights (moving further apart as they get nearer). But a vehicle with relatively dim, closely spaced headlights (such as an old Mini) could look as far away as a wide car with bright headlights yet be only half the distance.
The only safe rule of thumb is: If in any doubt whatsoever, don't overtake.
Sometimes it's useful to be reminded of things we take for granted. You might like to try this experiment.
Keeping your speed well down, drive for a while on a quiet country road on dipped beam. Notice how little visual information you have available to judge the nature of the road ahead - that's why you must drive slowly! Then switch to full beam and see how much more visual information you have.
Bearing in mind that your safe speed is limited by what you can see clearly, consider whether you always drive at a safe speed at night, particularly when you have to drive on dipped beam.
Think of a few near misses you've had in the dark. As you cast your mind back and relive each experience, ask yourself:
Are you taken by surprise by something that you don't see until you're almost on top of it - are you failing to collect information early enough?
Are you misinterpreting the information you have; for example by misjudging the speed and distance of an approaching vehicle?
Did you expect to take that long to process the information before deciding that it's hazardous?
Are you really driving at such a speed that you can stop comfortably within the distance you can see to be clear?
Highway Code References
Speed limits: rule 56
LINES AND LANES ALONG THE ROAD: rule 87
OVERTAKING: rule 99
Motorway road studs: rule 174
Taken from here:
www.donpalmer.co.uk/handbook/part4.htm#nightdrive
Thank you Don. [
] Christ I think I'd have grown too old to drive if I'd read all that!
Here is one simple rule however: USE COMMON SENSE
It is often not possible to apply specific rules to certain situations, but it is always possible to use your noggin!
happy motoring.
Here is one simple rule however: USE COMMON SENSE
It is often not possible to apply specific rules to certain situations, but it is always possible to use your noggin!
happy motoring.
Edited by ASBO on Tuesday 31st October 15:30
henrycrun said:
In addition -
Please use your handbrake when stationary
Please use your handbrake when stationary
I assume you meant to have "only" between handbrake and when!!
henrycrun said:
When its dry and clear, consider using sidelights only in a 30 area with streetlights
??highway code...
95: You should also
use dipped headlights, or dim-dip if fitted, at night in built-up areas and in dull daytime weather, to ensure that you can be seen
SamHH said:
gridgway said:
use dipped headlights, or dim-dip if fitted...
What is dim-dip?
I believe that if you switched on sidelights you would find a reduced power version of dipped headlights was activated automatically when the engine was running. This effectively prevented you from driving on sidelights only.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
Strange that, I have no idea what happened to dim dip. It seemed to be all the rage and then cars stopped being fitted with dim-dip units. I was a bit surprised to see it in the HC as I had assumed it had been done away with.
Did I interpret the HC right in saying that one should use dipped headlights in built up areas or does it cover the use of sidelights only? I was under the impression that despite some benefits of using sidelights and not headlights, it was precluded by the HC.
Now, what I think is that one should only use lights when there is someone to benefit from them - oops got my threads crossed.
And the question is am I always wrong whether my wife is there to benefit from my stupidity or not?
Hey ho, long day!
Graham
Did I interpret the HC right in saying that one should use dipped headlights in built up areas or does it cover the use of sidelights only? I was under the impression that despite some benefits of using sidelights and not headlights, it was precluded by the HC.
Now, what I think is that one should only use lights when there is someone to benefit from them - oops got my threads crossed.
And the question is am I always wrong whether my wife is there to benefit from my stupidity or not?
Hey ho, long day!
Graham
TripleS said:
SamHH said:
What is dim-dip?
I believe that if you switched on sidelights you would find a reduced power version of dipped headlights was activated automatically when the engine was running. This effectively prevented you from driving on sidelights only.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
Thanks for the reply. What is the purpose of this? Is it to prevent numpties driving with side lights only or is there some reason you might want a reduced power verstion of dipped headlights?
Edited by SamHH on Wednesday 1st November 22:52
gridgway said:
Did I interpret the HC right in saying that one should use dipped headlights in built up areas or does it cover the use of sidelights only? I was under the impression that despite some benefits of using sidelights and not headlights, it was precluded by the HC.
Rule 95 says that you should (not MUST) use dipped headlights or dim-dip at night in built up areas (no mention of street lights or speed limits). However, Rule 93 says that headlights MUST be used at night except on restrictied roads which it says are "those with street lights not more than 185 metres (600 feet) apart and which are generally subject to a speed limit of 30 mph". Rule 93 also says that sidelights must be lit at night (no expections).
My interpritation is that at night, when on restricted roads, you are allowed to use sidelights only, but you should also use dipped headlights.
What are the supposed benefits of using sidelights only in built up areas?
www.highwaycode.gov.uk/08.htm
SamHH said:
What are the supposed benefits of using sidelights only in built up areas?
www.highwaycode.gov.uk/08.htm
I think it is to do with not dazzling people with headlights so that they could see other things around cars...pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds etc.
Graham
You'll find it safer just to use dipped headlights. They catch reflective clothing and car reflectors better, other people can see you better etc...
Sidelights are really only for parking; I get infuriated with people who drive with them on in the rain or at dusk. It doesn't affect your fuel consumption enough for you to notice, so you might as well use dipped lights. If the purpose is to be seen, why use something that's a bright as a candle...
Rant over.
Sidelights are really only for parking; I get infuriated with people who drive with them on in the rain or at dusk. It doesn't affect your fuel consumption enough for you to notice, so you might as well use dipped lights. If the purpose is to be seen, why use something that's a bright as a candle...
Rant over.
I use headlights all the time, day or night.
It annoys me when people have badly set headlights which dazzle me, and I'd rather those folk drove on sidelights on restricted roads.
Of course all this is better than the people with a blown bulb who compensate by putting the other light on full beam...
It annoys me when people have badly set headlights which dazzle me, and I'd rather those folk drove on sidelights on restricted roads.
Of course all this is better than the people with a blown bulb who compensate by putting the other light on full beam...
SamHH said:
TripleS said:
SamHH said:
What is dim-dip?
I believe that if you switched on sidelights you would find a reduced power version of dipped headlights was activated automatically when the engine was running. This effectively prevented you from driving on sidelights only.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
Thanks for the reply. What is the purpose of this? Is it to prevent numpties driving with side lights only or is there some reason you might want a reduced power verstion of dipped headlights?
Edited by SamHH on Wednesday 1st November 22:52
I don't know the official answer, but I thought it was to prevent people driving on sidelights only, not that this necessarily merits the label 'numpty' IMHO. I still tend to feel that in certain circumstances, e.g. where the street lighting is of a very high standard, it can be satisfactory to drive on sidelights only and I think the HC (Rule 93) seems to recognise this.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
gridgway said:
7db said:
Of course all this is better than the people with a blown bulb who compensate by putting the other light on full beam...
And now that the dark has got er darker and colder with the onset of winter, there is a rash of people needing their fogs on. Strange that!
Graham
We didn't need to wait for winter (ish) conditions. I've seen people driving around Scarborough in the brilliant mid-day sunshine with headlights and front fog lights on.
Come to think of it the weather is glorious here today - not a hint of winter approaching.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
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