Day running lights
Following on from an earlier comment about asshats driving about with sidelights and fog lights on.

Now, this was once popular with the underclasses and BMW drivers keen to show off their 'angel eye' headlights but thankfully fell back out of fashion for nearly all but the truely chavvy.

Then, Audi start dressing the front of their cars like it's Christmas and every other manufacturer has copied them.

Volvo had lights you couldn't turn off years ago. They weren't 'trendy' and no one copied them but oh no, a bright white LED string to make you look like a fun council house tenent in December is all the rage.

Moreover, as they don't want to re-design the whole car, a lot of the manufacturers are putting these things right by the front fog lights. This has thus encouraged every back passage who wants to look like they have a car newer than they do to start with the sidelight/fog light thing again.

Grrrr!

Rather than looking to speed cameras for revenue generation Plod should start pulling these birth canals over and dishing out fines. Got to be millions in it.
(fivetide, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 9:51, 17 replies)

They're compulsory in Canada
Sweden too, I believe
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 9:54, closed)

No reason to doubt you
It would at least explain the historic volvo thing.

Just to be clear, no issue at all with having the headlights wired so they can't be switched off (like motorbikes must have). The problem is with these dazzling bright white baubles, especially by the fog lights and the encouragement it has given others to drive about with their cocking fog lights on all the time.
(fivetide, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 10:22, closed)

And the problem with lights on during the day is what exactly?

And while I'm here, what the fuck are sidelights for?

I have literally never ever put my side lights on. At no point in my driving history have I though too myself, Mmm getting a bit gloomy, better put my lights on, but I don’t want to be too visible, I don’t want to stand out too much…I know! I’ll just put my side lights on.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Oct 2012, 11:21, closed)

Me either

( snee held his breath since, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 12:02, closed)

They're for parking on the road at night
The idea is that you have some sort of marker light so people can see the obstruction. If you notice, most German cars will switch on the side and tail light on whatever side you leave the indicators set to.

Fog lights should have a big loud beeper that goes off if you exceed 25mph with them switched on. That's about as fast as you can go and still see far enough ahead to stop for an obstruction, if it's foggy enough to require foglights.

Putting fog lights on when it's only raining - or worse, snowing - should be a banning offence.
(gordonjcp, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 12:07, closed)

Well said!

(fivetide, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 12:54, closed)

The problem with lights on in the day is that it is a waste of fuel. Not such a big problem with LEDs but incandescents use a significant amount.

Headlights are massively overpowered for making yourself visible, they are designed for illuminating the road ahead of you. a 5W (sidelight bulb) is rated visible to over a mile away. If everybody used only sidelights during twilight hours, it would have the advantage of preventing the saturation of what little natural light there is, making cyclists and pedestrians much more visible . Trouble is, as soon as someone sticks a pair of 200W lights on, you need to do the same to compete.

In the UK, headlights are only required at night if the road is unlit. Otherwise, sidelights are fine.
(silene, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 13:27, closed)

Rubbish
Headlights use electricity from the battery not petrol.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Oct 2012, 18:01, closed)

mmm... The magic self charging battery? Don't know about you, but my car uses an alternator that is driven by the engine. Simple physics suggests that the load on the alternator depends on the current draw.
(silene, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 21:16, closed)

But the engine is running anyway to turn the wheels. The energy to turn the cogs and stuff would just go to waste otherwise. I think you're over complicating how things really work.

( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Oct 2012, 21:23, closed)

The load on the alternator is proportional to the current draw. Not something that you notice on most cars, but on a small engine with a large alternator, the drop in revs when you start up a high current electrical service is very noticeable.
(silene, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 21:38, closed)

I had a small rental car in the 'states once
Parked with the engine running I noticed the revs drop when I moved the steering wheel a little bit.

I put on the air-con, heated windscreen, lights and heated seats, then waggled the steering wheel vigarously and nearly managed to stall the poor thing.

It all adds up!
(BlondeBombshell Small but perfectly formed., Thu 11 Oct 2012, 8:34, closed)

Right, let's look into this.
1 watt= 0.001341022 horsepower.

Let's say that your headlights are 150W each. Hell make 'em 200W, so it's 400W total. (They're nowhere near that high, but let's run with this.)

400W= 0.5364088 HP. Even if you're driving a weedeater on wheels, that's what, maybe 0.5% of your car's output? Assuming that you get 30 miles per gallon (pretty common in the US) that's 0.15 mpg difference. You reduce your efficiency by far more than that by opening your window on a nice day.

tl;dr: twaddle.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Wed 10 Oct 2012, 19:20, closed)

That is for a 100% efficient alternator/ battery, and 0.5% of max horsepower, not average power. Not sure what the real numbers are. I'd guess around 30%, and average tractive power of around 8kW, in which case the numbers look a little different.

Anyway, I've seen figures that suggest moving from incandescent to LED DRLs can give you an extra 0.5mpg. Not the end of the world, but still a waste of fuel.
(silene, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 21:30, closed)

Chapter 4 of this: ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety_library/consultations/drl_20060727/drl_trl.pdf goes into a lot of detail, but suggest that average increases in fuel consumption are between 1% and 2% (depending on car) for a 160W DRL system.

Like I said, not the end of the world, but still significant over a years worth of driving. As far as I know, this is why incandescent type systems will not be allowed when they become mandatory over here.
(silene, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 22:39, closed)

I never realised that car lights could be so fascinating

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Thu 11 Oct 2012, 2:14, closed)

From 2011 onwards, all new cars have to have running lights
Better get used to it.

europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1394&type=HTML
(SimianKid internet faffer, Wed 10 Oct 2012, 12:58, closed)