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More dumbing down, this time of an already severely deskilled driving population, where lights have to be automatically on because too many people are no longer in charge of their own vehicles...just another example of one size fits all..because some clot who shouldn't drive can't drive everyone else is assumed to be equally useless.
DRLs are doing what hivis clothing has done, instead of being noticeable there are now so many silly fairy lights about that they blend into the background.
Amuses me when i see LED lights on a car advert, all it makes me do is want to avoid the thing because sooner or later the LED will fail and instead of a 50p bulb to replace it's typically from £300 upwards each unit.
Cars don't need rear DRL's, they don't need front ones either, they need a competent switched on driver, the type who can see what's going on all around and who for example can control a vehicle on a hill without the car assisting via yet more electronic faff.
Edited by gordonbennet on 15/07/2023 at 05:53
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Gordon, if there were an ability to uptick your comment I would be doing so with gusto!
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Gordon, if there were an ability to uptick your comment I would be doing so with gusto!
Agree, but with so many cars being painted in battleship grey may be we should stick with the DRLs as they appear out of the gloom.
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Gordon, if there were an ability to uptick your comment I would be doing so with gusto!
Agree, but with so many cars being painted in battleship grey may be we should stick with the DRLs as they appear out of the gloom.
Round here the preferred colour seems to be Black ! Equally invisible ?
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GB, I take your point and it may well be wholly or at least partly true, but if a feature like DRLs actually helps with road safety I'm all for it.
You could go back through the history of automotive development and point to lots of things we now entrust to the machine and not our skills. For example, you could have argued many years ago that a competent driver should master changing gear on a non-synchromesh box.
You need to remember that, however high the standards you and I set for ourselves when it comes to competent driving, there are other incompetent and careless fools out there who cannot or will not reach that standard.
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More dumbing down, this time of an already severely deskilled driving population, where lights have to be automatically on because too many people are no longer in charge of their own vehicles...just another example of one size fits all.. because some clot who shouldn't drive can't drive everyone else is assumed to be equally useless.
The logical conclusion of your argument is that all motoring legislation is unnecessary dumbing down.
Why have speed limits - skilled drivers know how to set their speed.
Why have lighting up times - skilled drivers know when to turn on their lights.
Why have the MoT - - skilled drivers maintain their cars correctly.
And so on ...
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The logical conclusion of your argument is that all motoring legislation is unnecessary dumbing down.
Why have speed limits - skilled drivers know how to set their speed.
Why have lighting up times - skilled drivers know when to turn on their lights.
Why have the MoT - - skilled drivers maintain their cars correctly.
And so on ...
I suppose i'm interested in this dumbing down because its been happening for a numbers of years in my own industry, in which i've been driving trucks for well over 40 years.
Much as in cars the idea is to eventually remove the driver from the vehicle except for an alleged supervisory role, well all i can say to that is good luck everyone when what will probably be a 50+ tonner has an error 404 crop up and goes off on its own.
Oh its alright they say because there'll always be a qualified driver in attendance, well again i say good luck with that, when our no longer hands on driver who hasn't been paying attention to what's been happening all around anyway has to make a split second decision to save the now error stricken vehicle from causing mayhem, said driver won't just be caught in surprise he/she will by then be so decondtioned from actual vehicle handling and control as to be virtually useless.
By all means pick holes, that's what a discussion is for, but one should always be careful of what they wish for and the laws of unintended consequences, not all progress turns out to be for the best.
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By all means pick holes, that's what a discussion is for, but one should always be careful of what they wish for and the laws of unintended consequences, not all progress turns out to be for the best.
True but equally not all progress turns out to be for the worst. Only history can judge the value of most innovations.
Without progress you might have been driving a horse and cart, not a truck, for well over forty years. Had you been around at the start of trucking you would no doubt have decried the innovation as dumbing down from the ability required to care for and handle a horse. Perhaps you still do.
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It's hard to argue DRL's are not a good idea, I've already given a link to the old article that makes the case very well. Contrast makes things easier to see.
www.thedrivingecademy.com/blog/fighterpilot
As to rear lights, it's always been very common to see cars in fog, for example, not carrying rear lights. Now, with DRL's there is a tendency for people deliberately or inadvertently to delay lighting up because they already have some relatively very bright (in twilight) DRL's on the front.
Automatically having rear lights on with DRL's addresses both of these problems and I fail to see why that shouldn't also be legislated.
Auto lights are a different question. They are not obligatory AFAIK and they are unnecessary. They also create a problem in that it seems more common now for people not to put headlamps on in poor visibility, where overall light levels mean that they don't come on automatically - an example of a nanny feature making drivers dumber.
But, pragmatically, many are pretty dumb anyway. We shouldn't leave them to figure it out, because they won't. So DRL's deal with the world as it is, not as it should be.
You can have similar debates about
blind spot monitoring,
cross traffic alerts,
lane-keeping,
adaptive cruise control, and
autonomous emergency braking.
They can all become a substitute for paying attention. I haven't actually heard anybody say yet, after a crash, "it wasn't my fault, I never saw the blind spot warning", but it's only a matter of time.
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I really don't think anyone believes that DRLs are adequate at night. They have automatic lights and assume they will switch on at the relevant time.
Certainly in my Skoda, there is no way to tell whether the lights are on and off short of looking around the steering wheel towards your right knee to see if the switch is illuminated or not. I am reasonably diligent about doing so, but many people will assume that automatic means automatic.
I tend to agree that the best solution is just for the lights to come on when the engine is started.
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<< It's hard to argue DRL's are not a good idea, I've already given a link to the old article that makes the case very well. Contrast makes things easier to see. >>
Like many earlier clearly 'good ideas' they are fine to begin with. The contrast you mention has to be ratcheted up as the good idea spreads. Hence we get increasingly bright headlamps in a leapfrogging war, causing obvious problems for many.
In Victorian times it was not too difficult for railway drivers travelling at 60mph to pick out signals lit only by paraffin lamps, because there weren't too many other lights around. Try to imagine doing that these days ?
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Go back even a couple of decades and everyone in London drove around at night on side lights, and i mean 5w filament bulbs.
As Andrew alludes to this preserved night vision to a decent extent and pedestrians and cyclists etc didn't disappear as they now do in the increasing light wars where night vision is destroyed.
S'ok i know there's no going back.
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I don't think the suggestion that "DRL's become ineffective when all cars have them" really washes. They will certainly be less remarkable/noticeable, but they remain visible.
Brightness is legislated. But of course the permitted brightness would be dazzling at night. They must turn off when the headlamps are on but this seems to be interpreted as 'dimmed' by some manufacturers who choose to display their 'brand' pretty patterns.
I don't think there is a perfect answer to this until auto-lights all detect visibility as well as total light.
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.... sooner or later the LED will fail
Not yet...
.....and instead of a 50p bulb to replace it's typically from £300 upwards each unit.
....and not so. My 2005 Audi was one of the first cars to have LED DLRs. It also has the facility to switch them on and off with ease via the 'multi media interface' controls, so they remain off when the lighting is good on ordinary roads. But I always switch them on for dual carriageways. So far, none have failed. if they do, a complete set is apparently available for less than £45, which admittedly is pricey for what they do.
www.autodoc.co.uk/tech/14354268
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