I have been driving for 25 years.
In the last few years I have noticed an escalation in cars driving without brake lights. Having almost running into the back of a few.
Is this due to owners not checking their lights regularly. MOTs not being carried out properly. Or more sinisterly, muppets enticing a rear end shunt for a payout.
I managed to alert a driver at a set of lights recently that he had no brake lights. He just said,yeah I know!.
Considering all modern cars have a third brake light, I have lost count of cars with the two side lights not working. Or is there a general fault.
As we have a lack of police on the roads, I can see this situation getting worse. Especially if the government gets its way in having MOTs every two years.
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>>muppets enticing a rear end shunt for a payout<<
This was a common trend in the seventies! pull on the h/brake (so no b/lights show ) bang! rear-ender = compo!
or, put blown bulbs in, bang! if rear lights get smashed whos to know bulbs were broken before impact? = compo!
usually carried out by the equivelent of the baseball cap brigade (baseball caps weren't "in" then, but we still had the "muppets") in old banger-type cars!
Billy
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Just been outside and changed a brake light on the Xant. SWMBO followed me into the road and reported it out. Would usually notice pretty quickly from relections in house door as I reverse in so I doubt it's been dead more than a day or two.
I think far too many folks only get these things looked at or sorted at Service/MoT.
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>>or, put blown bulbs in, bang! if rear lights get smashed whos to know bulbs were broken before impact? = compo
You can tell if the fillament in a lamp was lite when impact caused the bulb to fail by carefully looking at the filament remains. This is a procedure that is undertaken in various crash senarios in order to reconstruct accidents of a more serious nature.
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rustbucket (the original)
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How?
the filament will "usually" have originally blown when the bulb was lit, but not neccessarily when the bulb (glass) was broken, can they tell if the filament went "x" days before the glass?
Billy
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How?
the filament is litteraly white hot. When it break it showers globules of molten filament around the glass fragments. Most of it disapears.
A light thats not lit (cold) will usually have broken filament still hanging to its anchors.
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And I dream Im on vacation - cos I like the way that sounds -
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Read a book years ago called Aircrash Detective covering a number of investigations from the Comet to problems with the 727 when it first came into service.
Examination of filament remains was used as long ago as the fifties to prove whether a particular bulb, fractured on impact, was illuminated at the time. If the filament had "gone" while still inside the inert gas filled bulb it would show much less oxidation (or something like that).
Edited by Bromptonaut on 28/12/2007 at 13:59
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Thats good enough for me then! - just wondered how they could tell? - not that i was disputing the fact at all ;-)
Still tho' plenty "did" get away with it and were paid out by insurance co's. (and they "do" still try it today, and get away with it!) maybe they only check in such detail if theres a fatality?
Billy
Edited by billy25 on 28/12/2007 at 14:04
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Have you also noticed how many cars have very bright rear lights and almost invisible stop lights? They obviously put the 12/21w bulb in the wrong way and don't care less about blinding people behind them. (Yeh - I know - offset pins on a 12/21w - but it doesn't stop them doing it wrong - same as people who replace orange indicator bulbs with white ones - muppets!)
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I remember watching a programme where the police were trying to work out what happened in a motorcycle fatality. The driver insisted that the bike ran into him at full speed without trying to stop, but the police established that the biker had been braking hard at the time of the crash because the hot filament in the brakelight bulb had stretched on impact.
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I think there is only one reason why drivers have one or no brake lights; they don't check them. They're either too idle or too dumb.
I have to check mine on the truck every day (and sign to say I've done so) and whilst I don't have a set schedule for checking my car I tend to keep a reasonably good eye on things. Bike gets checked before each trip for the simple reason that you've generally only got one back light on a bike and you can't see it whilst you're riding!
I do wish the police would clamp down more on duff lights in general; sorry it's a hobby-horse of mine, and yes I do know that certain cars need a major stripdown to replace a bulb, but I still think that if motorists took a bit more care on this issue, it would do a lot to reduce accidents.
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