My neighbour will be busy this weekend with the hose. His nice new black Audi has returned from a motorway journey looking like complete mess of darkness. Any bits of the car that should be shiny (wheels) or bright such as lights and number plate have just blended in with the rest of the mess! My concern is what the salty grime is doing underneath our cars.

Couldn’t understand why I had such poor beam whilst driving at night on Monday. Checked on the following morning and the lights were covered with a salty grime . My Monday journey had been several hours on a well salted motorway which had thoroughly dried out throwing dried salt into the atmosphere and over travelling vehicles. The nighttime poor beam I experienced was almost as if I was driving on an unlit road with only sidelights. I temporarily put full beam on that got me home ok-no oncoming drivers flashed-so my lights were really filthy. This was just one days motoring.The car had been hosed over on Sunday .

Had to use the scraper on mine when out and about yesterday. Lots of grit on the roads which would easily cause windscreena and thus front lights to get grubby very quickly. Using my windscreen washer a LOT.

I believe it used to be a legal requirement for all cars in Sweden to have headlight washers, certainly all Volvo and Saab cars used to have wash wipe systems and I can recall seeing systems on cars when I was in Sweden (some years ago). I recall having headlight wipers on my Volvo 360, and seeing the image on the road ahead of me as the blades ran across the glass whilst the wipers cleaned the headlights.

My current car had a winter option but the importer required a factory order and this would have meant paying substantially more for the car. (Car was discounted if purchased off the shelf). I lament this every time I drive in this bad weather, driving with dirty lights greatly reduces the light spread and intensity. It is a simple safety issue.