Thread: Daytime Running Lights

Originally Posted by bbyer

You bring up a good point.

I actually think the small round bright things in each corner of the front bumper are marketing devices to differentiate the high line from the not so high line of vehicle, regardless of manufacturer.

As such, on my 3, I changed out the "white" bulbs and put in yellow bulbs so I now claim that they are "snow" lights. I then aimed them so they kind of illuminated down low and into the ditch. If I really had my way, in a real snow storm, I would like to be able to turn off the HID dipped regular headlights and just run on the yellow lights. I find that with yellow, the flashback from the light reflecting off the falling snowflakes is reduced.

The only real experience I have had with the flat top pattern yellow headlights is while driving around Noumea in New Caledonia back in the early seventies. It seems that yellow was the law for headlights. At night it was like approaching vehicles were just running their park lights except that one could see the road well. In fog at night, the yellow was a pleasure, if driving in fog ever is fun.

I have been driving with my dipped beam headlights on all the time for 25 years, ever since I read that they reduced your chance of having a collision by about 25-30% even on a sunny day. Seemed like cheap insurance to me. The only time I didn't used to do so was when I had a car with non-adjustable lights/no self levelling and was heavily loaded, as I didn't want to dazzle other drivers (and risk being called a w**nker). I'm going to ask my local dealer about programming in the DLR function next time my D3 is in for a service, as the handbook says this is possible. Of course if it changes other Oz-specific settings then I'll just do what I've always done and turn the switch.

Your comment about foglights being a marketing device made me laugh - it's so true, expecially in WA! My personal experience is that yellow foglights are much better in proper fog or heavy snow. In fact, the best car I ever had in those conditions was a Citroen 2CV6 that I had in France in the early 80s and which had the old French vertical-dip yellow headlights. They were totally useless in any other conditions, mind - you'd have been able to see better with a helmet torch.

Fog lights should be yellow the same as dust lights are orange this is to help cut through the water patricals / dust particals with less glare. the fog lights they use today are a high intense light aimed low to go under the fog so other people can see you , NOT so you can see , hence rear fog lights. So if they are not to see where you are going , why do ******* use them ? ( sorry just answered my own Question ). The mounting of **** lights is not much differant to spotties , the reason why they move around , often up into oncomming traffic, this being the reson they are illegal to have on when not in fog.

I believe that some manufacturers call W**ker lights "Puddle Lights"?

Anyway, our holiday home is just outside Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tableland & the fog lights do work as fog lights in fog.
They shine directly in front & to the side & allow you to see the white or yellow line on the side/edge of the road & they also light up the "Cats Eyes" just in front of you, where they have bothered to fit them.
I have driven through very thick fog around Milla Milla & found that the fog lights really do help, mind I nearly drove int someones driveway because the line curved into it slightly before I saw that it was not the road.
Very slow going that night but at least I knew where the road went.
The rear fogs also gave me some piece of mind that some clot that knew the road really well would not cream me from behind.
In really thick fog I found side lights & fogs are best, any headlights & the glare back sends you silly, we sillier.
Jonesfam

so:
IF the lower lamps are true fog lamps, &
IF the fog lamps are correctly aligned, &
IF you believe that driving with your lamps on reduces the accident rate due to greater visibility,

THEN

shouldn't you use the fog lights, rather than the headlamps? From a purely logical stance, not taking into account the legality or practicality of doing so.

In that case, I don't understand the "W**K*R" term being bandied about? I could understand it if they were driving lights.

Cheers,

Gordon

I enjoyed all the "ifs" above.

In practice, at least here in the New World, Daytime Running Lights are apparently whatever the manufacturer designs - or not.

For many years, GM, rather than run the headlights on their pickups, added a couple of frosted lens oblong things which contain wedge base 3157 28 watt / 8 watt dual filament "brake" light bulbs. Only the 28 watt filament is illuminated and if one is lucky, lasts perhaps a year.

As far as aiming is concerned, if one can argue that a rear facing common brake light bulb is aimed, then I guess one could say the front facing DRL is aimed to the same degree.

GM also tried dimmed versions of the high beam and now for the most part, uses the dipped beam at full intensity. I am now starting to see LED setups which I presume are DRL to the lawyers and sales features to the marketing types.

As to safety, it appears that areas which are predominately snow covered seem to show some decrease in daytime accidents; sunny places, well that is not so clear.

All I would say for certain is that when DRL were not the law, having ones headlights on gets you noticed as I have pretty much always driven with my low beams on and many people flashed their lights back at me - so for good or bad, they noticed. I would also say that on hot bright sunny days where the road is reflecting back at you, if you can see the headlights of a distant vehicle, then one is pretty certain it is coming at you rather than that you are following it. That can matter when passing on a two lane highway.

As a matter of practice these days, I only run my actual fog lights in bad weather on the highway, (and almost never in the city), as I believe that their use makes one stand out to the speed trap types - particularily given that my lights are yellow, a bit unusual here.

Originally Posted by Duck's Guts

You could run a seperate power supply to the DRL's via a relay triggered by a supply spliced into the parkers/signature LED's.

DRLs are now a requirement under EU. However I think you will find that for Aus (and EU) it is expected that they go out when parkers and full head lights are turned on, they turn on with the ignition.

Hella and Narva now do kits that are ADR approved.
http://www.narva.com.au/products/browse/led-daytime-running-lamps

Originally Posted by jonesfam

I believe that some manufacturers call W**ker lights "Puddle Lights"?
Jonesfam

Puddle lights have (from my LR years) always been the lights that are on the bottom of the doors when you open them.
Referring to the "Puddles" you may step in once the door is opened.
Cheers

Originally Posted by gghaggis

so:
IF the lower lamps are true fog lamps, &
IF the fog lamps are correctly aligned, &
IF you believe that driving with your lamps on reduces the accident rate due to greater visibility,

THEN

shouldn't you use the fog lights, rather than the headlamps? From a purely logical stance, not taking into account the legality or practicality of doing so.

Well-mounted fog lights are mounted low so that they are aligned almost parallel to the ground to light a lot of area without glaring the driver. But that means they are very susceptible to pointing directly at and thus glaring on-coming traffic in non-fog conditions, which does not occur in fog because of lack of distance penetration. Even using high beam in thick fog does not glare on-coming traffic until the vehicles are very close due to lack of penetration. Fog lights (without low or high beams) can provide excellent visibility in very thick fog, having lived in an area prone to such fogs.

I have 3000K (yellow) HID lights in my D4's halogen lights to provide improved lighting in rain. They provide very good immediate visibility through the spray left when trucks pass the other way, whereas white light reflects until the spray has dissipated. They should work well in dust too.