Safe Speed Forums

I really hate cars with misaligned headlights, ie the ones where one points correctly and the other one is on permanant full beam blinding oncoming traffic.

So what should I find coming through Great Horwood, Bucks (unlit village, 30 limit) parked up half on the path half on the road just before a sharp 90 degreee corner with poor visability but a car with one full beam right in my face making me lose my ability to see anything else.

Slowed to a crawl because there might be pedestrians about and I knew about the blind corner and once I've passed the front of the vehicle I take a look at it and notice distinctive Thames Valley Police livery down the side of it. I think the car was an Astra or an Octavia or similar.

Obviously I didn't stop as I don't trust the buggers not to end up doing me on some trumped up charge (apologies to any police types reading this, I know that 95% of you are decent honest people but 5% is too high a risk for me to take) so I didn't get the number plate of the vehicle. Do police cars have trackers or anything so that they can find and fix the faulty vehicle if I make a complaint.

The safety implications of this fault and the spot that'd chosen to park are staggering, it was just gone 11PM, so prime time for drunk drivers and drunk pedestrians, just before a blind corner. If I'd missed the corner, I would have ended up in the side of a pub, possibly squishing a pedestrian on the way.

But it's illegal to park with headlights on anyway, badly focussed or not!

He could have just stopped and still been in the car with the engine running. I couldn't really see inside to see if it contained coppers or anything.

Still illegal! 2 wheels on pavement means parked to most people!

I thought 2 wheels on pavement was illegal anyway?

Though I do it outside my GFs place. The fine will be cheaper than a new wing mirror.

This tale could have had a nasty ending -

Years ago when i was a mature student i did some night time taxi work.
Driving down this road i was blinded by car in distance -so i flashed headlights to request driver to check - no response , so i gave a few rapid flashes - no response - i slowed down as other car came level and stopped
"Whats wrong , said the PC ", "nothing " i said -"thought it was some youn plonker who didn't know where dip switch was" . "Oh no , its an old plonker , your right, sorry" was the reply from a very joly PC
So it's not just the bib on here that have a sense of humour.
Thought some of our bib might like it.

Police cars frequently appear to have their dipped beams set rather high - in fact it's quite a good way of spotting them in the mirror at night. My assumption for this is that they are "unloaded" when they go for servicing, beam checks etc, then when put back into service the boot is loaded up with a couple of hundredweight of assorted clobber, and bingo.. High headlights..

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Possibly - but he did say sorry, and words to the effect that an old plonker could not see the high beam warning