Cars to have headlights always on

[Lissa]

Originally Posted by gid

waiting for Lissa to tell us why we shouldnt have our bike lights on


good job Im not meeting her this weekend

And we would never tell anyone else they shouldn't ride with their lights on..............we just tell people why we choose not to, so ner!

[embee]

Indeed old news.

The fuel consumption thing is absolute rubbish as usual, modern daytime running lights (DRL) are LED and take negligible power. I've seen a technical paper where measurements were taken (or attempted) for fuel and emissions of regulated pollutants (i.e. not CO2) and the results were negligible and/or inconclusive.

I don't think DRLs are desirable personally. A good example of where they are not good was when an oncoming car with DRLs was followed by a truck, and a car overtook the truck. I found I natutrally concentrated on the DRLs and in marginal light conditions it would be easy not to notice the overtaking car (without them). It's OK if everything has them, or as we have had for years just the odd Volvo or Saab with them, but when you get to a sizeable minority of cars with them, then others without become "invisible", especially bikes.

When I worked in Austria they "strongly recommended" the use of daytime headlights on grounds of reduced accident rates, but I've heard they have actually backtracked on that and opted out of DRLs due to significantly increased motorcycle accident rates (not sure of this, not sure if they can if it's EU rules, is it true??).

Just another bit of legislative cr@p.

I generally drive with the lights on. No sound basis for it - it's a question of being seen, but I have no evidence to confirm that other drivers are more likely to see the car. Good point about bikes merging into all this brightness.

Haven't seen you on here for a while Eden. Welcome back

[Dave20046]

Originally Posted by plowsie

I tend to adopt this anyway, not really up to taking my chances.

Can't see what the benefit really is for them.

Yep I did this in my test today and visibly saw the guy stop himself from reversing straight into my path. I was worried about doing it though as I've been penalised before on lessons for using 'advanced riding techniques' that shouldn't be used in the test...daft but how it is.

[Dave20046]

I think it's a bad idea; as we all know it'll just make us harder to distinguish from a way away.
Although in the car I always drive with my headlights on on the motorway (or sometimes sidelights) and always have some form of lighting on when it just starts to go dim in the slightest.