Daytime lights now mandatory for cars and vans

[gilesjuk]

I see the CTC have commented on this:

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/s ... ghts-29304

I personally think it is unnecessary, I have no problem seeing cars but I've had problems seeing past them with the bright LED day time lights on some Audi cars.

Drivers would see each other easily if they didn't have tinted windows.

[kwackers]

I love this:

The Commission's consultation paper emphatically states that "road users not having lighting devices – ie. pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds – do not become less conspicuous if all vehicles feature DRL".

How can it possibly be the case that once people become conditioned to the idea that a vehicle with lights is something to look out for that everything else wont drop back into the greyscape?

The problem as it stands is that often drivers don't bother checking traffic long enough to spot bicycles when approaching junctions / roundabouts etc. Why on earth does giving most of them the chance to reduce the amount of time they need to spend spotting 'threats' make us safer? Even those that spend a whole second looking will now be able to get by with a quick glance.

[Ellieb]

Hmm. I'm not sure it will necessarily make things worse. From what I've experienced SMIDSY happens not becuase drivers look at a bike & it is too inconspicuous to 'see'. It is becasue they do not look at all or becuase they are looking in the wrong place. Most incidents for me happen when the driver is pulling out & looking further down the road for something that travels faster than I do. Either that or I am obscured by a door pillar. By the same token I'm not sure I can see how it will make car driving safer. If people are taking care to look in the right place both cars and bikes are perfectly conspicuous enough to be visible.

[kwackers]

Hmm. I'm not sure it will necessarily make things worse. From what I've experienced SMIDSY happens not becuase drivers look at a bike & it is too inconspicuous to 'see'. It is becasue they do not look at all or becuase they are looking in the wrong place. Most incidents for me happen when the driver is pulling out & looking further down the road for something that travels faster than I do. Either that or I am obscured by a door pillar. By the same token I'm not sure I can see how it will make car driving safer. If people are taking care to look in the right place both cars and bikes are perfectly conspicuous enough to be visible.

Yes, but the lights make it easier to see moving vehicles, you glance, no lights and so pull out.

The problem is the brain is wired to look for threats, the reason a driver doesn't spend time looking for a bicycle hidden behind a lamp post is because it isn't a threat. Currently though they need to look up a road for long enough to ascertain that any cars in view aren't actually moving and that 'long' glance gives a cyclist chance to pop out from behind whatever was hiding him. What happens with lights (once everyone has them) is that amount of time spent looking will reduce and with it the odds of spotting the bicycle coming from behind the lamp post.

It may well be that the effect is minimal but I reckon the assertion that it won't make any difference (and I've seen 'experts' assert that it will make things better!) is false.
What it's really about is stopping cars crashing into each other, car drivers get more protection at the expense of other road users but nobody wants to come out and say this because the overall aim is to reduce deaths on the road and if that means 10 cyclists extra die but 50 motorists are saved then that's the way it works.

[[XAP]Bob]

I'd much rather ban all but side lights* in streetlit areas (fog lights permissable on motorways IFF it's foggy).

I have no problem seeing for half a mile or so in towns, until some audi with HID lights comes round the corner...

We don't need more lights to compensate for night blindness, we certainly don't need more lights to be able to see solid objects during the day. Tinted windscreens (in the area defined by MOT regulations for scratches etc) should simply be banned.

Bob

*Side lights would have a legally mandated maximum brighnes (some flux per cm2 at 10m)

[gilesjuk]

Motorbikes tend to run daytime lights to be seen, I'm guessing this has been inspired by that.

[snibgo]

I suspect drivers already rely on peripheral vision, to a certain extent, and a vehicle with DRL is probably easier to spot without directly looking at it.

It's another version of blaming the victim: even motorists feel obliged to do something daft in order to be seen by other dozy motorists.

It encourages lazy looking, so it's a bad idea for anyone who doesn't have similar lights, of course.

[drossall]

I've got a letter saying that the UK Government is aware of the risks.

For the the point is that drivers should already be giving 100% of their attention to the road. If someone wants to be more visible, i.e. get more attention, they therefore have to steal that attention from someone else. Visibility is not an abstract concept that you can have ever more of; it's an interaction between road users who are people with human limitations and fixed capacities.

[brianleach]

Motorbikes tend to run daytime lights to be seen

Not me. No real evidence for this but I always found that motorists looked for longer if I had no lights on but would judge, usually wrongly, that they had time to exit a side street if I had lights on.

I really felt that the lights gave them something to aim at so I never used them. Haven't been on the bike since last autumn for various reasons, the main one being more cycle journeys.

[squeaker]

Motorbikes tend to run daytime lights to be seen, I'm guessing this has been inspired by that.

There's much more 'previous' than that. A long, long time ago (i.e. early 70's, just after I'd graduated) a colleague was working on a project for the MoD (as it was then) on daylight headlight use for military vehicles. IIRC the results of thetrial (which would have used good stats) was that even for things the size of military vehicles, the use of daytime headlights reduced the number of collisions
Then there's all those 70's Volvos and their DRLs - I can still recall the radio ads asking drivers not to flash their lights at the Volvo drivers who had left their lights on....

[MartinC]

I love this:

The Commission's consultation paper emphatically states that "road users not having lighting devices............do not become less conspicuous.............".

I do too. If it's true then there's no point to DRL's

[Flinders]

Exactly.
If you see the lighted ones more, it means that by definintion you see the unlighted ones less- like us, and pedestrians, and horses, and.....

This is really about motor vehicle to motor vehicle collisions, and will add nothing to, and may well undermine, the safety of everyone else.

[kwackers]

I had an interesting experience tonight which I thought could well have some bearing on this.

Travelling along a well lit A road with a side road on my left and a car waiting, the driver was looking straight at me then just as I got close he went to pull out. Fortunately he spotted me and slammed on at the last second.

Now I'm lit up like a christmas tree, 2x5w LED lights, hi vis, the works. So why did it happen?

Well, coming up behind me was another car who obviously wanted to turn left, I reckon I was probably lost between his headlights and the driver waiting to pull out saw him indicating and went for it.

If we move this scenario to day time wouldn't it be even easier to get lost between two headlights?

[gilesjuk]

If we move this scenario to day time wouldn't it be even easier to get lost between two headlights?

The daytime lights won't be the usual headlights, they're a row of LEDs usually below the headlights.

Example of them here:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/designla ... hanks.aspx

I find them much more attention seeking and distracting than headlights.

[Vorpal]

The use of daytime running lights is actually rather controversial, and like the use (and compulsory use) of cycle helmets, has lots of studies 'proving' they are effective, aren't effective, reduce numbers of accidents and/or severity, increase the number accidents, etc.

Some of those studies are listed at (pro DRL stite) http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/DRLs/studies.htm and (anti DRL site) http://www.dadrl.org.uk/

I haven't spent much time looking through this, but I do know that Austria repealed their law requiring daytime running lights. Austria experienced a significant increase in the number of accidents involving motorcycles during the few (three?) years that the law was in place.