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Unless the light level is low - twilight or very overcast - I personally don';t see why dipped headlights are needed - given in my view it's 'to be seen' rather than to see, which I think you should be able to do wither with no lights at all or just 'sidelights'.
Even though the law is for the use of dipped rather than sidelights on such conditions, rarely have I seen people pulled over by Plod for using the latter instead.
What is getting far more common is people not having ANY lights on at all or just DRLs when driving at night in areas lit by (white) LED streetlights. Odd really, given that I would've expected many of the cars I see do this have auto lights, given how recent they appear to be. Maybe it is still a feature only on upper spec models?
Whatever the cause, more drivers appear to be oblivious to driving without lights in urban areas.
As regards driving in fog and use of lights, my car has front fog lamps, and whilst they are useful in thicker fog, they really are there to find the edges of the road up to about 10-20m away, and thus won't allow the driver to drive much more than 20mph. At higher speeds, they aren't much use.
I've also driven when it's been raining so hard that visibility has been akin to quite heavy fog, good enough for 20-30mph at best, and yet many continue to drive at ridiculously high speeds with no way of being able to stop in time due to the reduced visibility and poor road conditions. I think that way too many people think their car's 'safety' gizmos will come to their aid, when all they'll do at best is mitigate a fatal crash to one with very serious injury (at best).
To be honest, the only people who should be driving in thick fog are those doing so for their job and for crucial infrastructure needs and emergency services, plus perhaps farmers in the own emergency situation. Not worth the risk otherwise, especially if it causes accidents that stretch the emergency services resources even thinner.
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