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People who use front foglights in good visibility are either posers or cant operate their car. If you cant see more than a few meters with any combination of lights should you be driving at all?
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Perhaps the main reason people use front fogs as DRLs is because they think it looks 'cool' :-(
They used to irritate me slightly until I realised how cool they are. Now, when I meet a car coming the other way which has foglights on (and I've forgotten to put mine on) I put them on immediately to show that I'm cool as well.
;-)
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put them on immediately
That's obviously the answer - we should all use them!
I don't know whether it's deliberate or not, but foglight design seems to have changed - the last car I had where the foiglights usefully lit the road was a 1990 Sierra.
Every car since, the lights have been useless in that respect.
However, while waiting to come out of our village on to the main bypass road in the morning, it's quite noticeable that foglamps are visible briefly before headlamps. With traffic doing perhaps 50MPH the time difference is minimal, but it would be greater at lower speeds.
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Is there any law against using dipped headlights during the day in normal weather (as opposed to foglights)?
A relative has just purchased a new Skoda Octavia (nice car BTW) and it came with Daytime Running Lights activated by default (apparently they all leave the factory like this and its up to the dealer to disable them). His dealer has left them active and he's not bothering to ask for them to be disabled. I assume this applies across VW/Audi because I see many new cars from those brands with headlights on in blazing sunshine.
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The bit about fog lights than I'm unsure of is I always thought they are meant to shine ahead and be low to the ground. But I'm on my third car where the front foglights are in the headlight assembly itself - Golf MkIV, Passat and now a Mazda6 MkI Sport.
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FL are supposed by law to have a 3% cut off, thus a lower aim than dipped, which is 1.5% - 2% I think. Many of the aftermarket/home made fogs seem to flout the requirements, but the police presumably have got other things to do.
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Whatever the merits or otherwise of fog lights, front and rear, a problem is that people do not switch them off when the conditions improve and make their use both irrelevant and illegal. People don't usually drive around with the wipers on when it isn't raining so why can't they act sensibly re their lighting arrangements?
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Quite a few cars I've had you could not leave the lights on by mistake - they would go off when you turned the lights off, e.g.
- Vauxhall Vectra B - push buttons for foglights that would be off the next time you started the car even if left on
- Golf and Passat - the combined light switch had to be pulled out for fog lights and therefore turned off when you switch lights off
- Mondeo MkIII similar to the VWs but mine had auto lights but you could only turn on the fog lights if you switched from auto
The Mazda6 I have seems to let you leave the front fogs on though... the rear ones go off because the light control for it does not physically stay in position (it's a rotary control on the indicator stalk).
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A couple of points: I always understood that fog lights are mounted low and emit a wide shallow beam so that in fog the driver is not confronted by a wall of white, which is what happens if you use your headlights - in fact, the more powerful the latter are, the worse the effect.
Secondly, I abhor the use of foglights in ordinary visibility, especially when the road is wet, when the glare from the surface can be considerable. They don't make the car more visible than dipped headlights and they don't provide any meaningful light for the driver, and if they are used in addition to dipped headlights they result in "illumination overload" for drivers coming the other way.
There are enough problems with badly aligned headlights as it is.
Edited by ChrisPeugeot on 03/12/2008 at 10:48
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Does anyone remember the days when you'd flash your lights at someone and point at the front of their car mouthing "your lights are on" during the day? Then they would smile and wave back in thanks as they switched them off? Or did I dream it all?
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Does anyone remember the days when you'd flash your lights at someone .........
I remember.
Regarding foglights, if everyone switched theirs on it would cease to be cool, and the trend/fashion would start to die out.
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Hmm, think I'll put my money into the likes of Cibie and Ring. Headlight bulb manufacturers must be fairly recession proof.... ;-)
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I personally don't think that most modern front foglights dazzle anymore than dipped headlamps.
> If they are adjusted correctly then I agree, but as someone else alluded earlier in the thread they are not subject to any checks for allignment at MOT time, and there are far too many which are out of allignment and do a very good interpretation of full beam headlights (usually only the one, though).
Very true. One of the reason's I dislike driver's with the front-fogs always on; more often than not, their fogs are doing a wonderful impression of full-beam (either due to misalignment or they've fitted stronger bulbs)!
Perhaps the main reason people use front fogs as DRLs is because they think it looks 'cool' :-(
True. But I also see many older people (ie. those not wearing baseball caps) also with their fog-lights blaring out despite good visibility.
To me it usually just smacks of a selfish attitude: "I want all the light I can have to see where I'm going, don't give a rats ass about anybody else".
Thankfully sometimes quickly switching my dipped-beams off then on again (dipped, NOT full-beam) sometimes wakes them up to their error, but usually you just get a vacant-like stare "Er, I can't possibly be doing anything wrong, why all these cars flashing me???"
......Wonder if HJ will change his view or at least better explain it?
Edited by adam.mt on 03/12/2008 at 12:14
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Hmm think I'll put my money into the likes of Cibie and Ring. Headlight bulb manufacturers must be fairly recession proof.... ;-)
>>
Unless the MoT starts at 4 year old cars and is every two years.
IMO failed bulbs only get replaced at MoT time judging by the number of vehicles with failed lights. :-)
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I similarly don't understand ... but have noticed a linked phenomenon.
Usually, inappropriate rear fogs are used by young women and elderly men. Except in ice, where many drivers round this way seem to think they are necessary when the temp drops.
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HJ has e-mailed me directly asking me not to run a campaign and instead to re-read what he has wrote. I have done this and yet can still only conclude that he believes it's okay to use fog-lights during the day.
Fair enough then, but the law clearly states this as illegal.
Thus, it leaves me confused. Surely, if that's his view it would be better stated unambiguously? That way if it builds a collection of like minds then there's the outside possibility of the law being changed. Otherwise it's just encouraging people to break a law and yet not properly try and get it changed (and is that right?).
Do others get the same impression? Just wondering if I'm mistaken (am I the only one?) and something has indeed been 'lost in translation'.
Edited by adam.mt on 03/12/2008 at 17:56
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