Rear Lights - Compliance With The Law

[Strudul]

I'm wanting to mod my rear lights, but want to ensure they are legal.

Thinking that I could gut the cluster and install 2, parallel LED strips:
- The top strip would be reverse lights / sequential indicators
- The bottom strip would be used for fog lights



- Are sequential indicators legal now?
- Is it ok to have reverse lights and indicators combined? Not sure how they would work if you tried to reverse while using indicators / hazards.
- Will an LED tube be bright enough for a fog light?
- Would the light tubes need to be divided to stop light interference (white reverse + red fog just causing a pink glow)?
- Is there anything else I'm overlooking?

Cheers

Edited by Strudul on Monday 29th May 00:59

[TooMany2cvs]

You'll be wanting to go through the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/made
(There's several subsequent updates, but that's the body of it)

The schedules near the end tell you what minimum distances need to be kept between the various lights, together with minimum visibility angles etc.

AIUI, sequential indicators (apart from failing the basic taste police test) legally count as the first element to be lit is the indicator itself, the rest are optional extra lights.

[silver1011]

On the Porsche Cayenne the DRL's completely drown out the LED indicators (most manufacturers dim the DRL's when the indicators are on so that they can be seen, but not Porsche for some reason).

The single horizontal light tube is the DRL, the individual reflectors behind are the LED indicators.

So I'd say you'd be OK running a similar reverse light / indicator set-up.



Quite a few manufacturers use LED's for the rear foglight function so they can be sourced with a bright enough output if needed...

You can see the three super-bright LED's that perform the rear fog light function on this Skoda Superb estate...

[xjay1337]

Just do it......... as long as all the lights work as expected... stop worrying......