Safe Speed Forums

Every time I pass a car on the hard sholder/car on the verge showing hazards / similar, I use full beam for maybe half a second or less, regardless of oncoming traffic (if I'm on dipped then there will be traffic ahead, but if it's less than 10 seconds away I don't generally do this) to check for stuff / demented pedestrians in the middle of the road. Is this reasonable? I believe it to be as it oughtn't dazzle anyone, but it ought to show up anything I don't want to hit that's in the middle of the road.

This is a direct consequnce of this site, btw - a while back, Paul gave an example of situations he used full beam, one of which was to check if a 'shape' was a pedestrian, or something like that - having thought about it I've adapted it to the above, and it's served me well (in that, er, it has never saved me from anything but never caused an incident either). I can see one real problem with it, which is that it might be interpreted as a signal by someone I can't see hovering around the vehicle to go ahead and cross the road, but at the same time I would see them and be able to comfortably stop - what say people here?

One problem I can see is that the vehicle with it's hazards on might be waiting to pull out, indicating but not realising they still have their hazards on, and think your 'flash' was an invitation to pull out.

On a motorway I will usually move out to the centre lane if something is on the shoulder. On a single carriageway I would move over as far as practical and slow down.

I don't see any need for full beam.

I don't know about 'every time'. If I can move out to L2 or even L3 to increase lateral separation, that's even better.

And I don't know about 'half a second or less'. I'm more inclined to use main beam for 1 or 1.5 seconds. That's more vision for me and less chance of it looking like a signal.

But I totally agree that it's a valuable technique that might save lives. Clearly the downside is the risk of dazzle to other motorists. In some situations my judgement says the risk of danger from dazzle is greater - probably on single carriageways this would frequently be the case.

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Paul Smith
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