Safe Speed Forums

OTOH, some clarification of lighting rules/use is needed urgently.

I was fortunate enough to be on my way home at 4:10 today, pretty much daytime but overcast.

I'd say about 45% of cars had no lights on, 45% had headlights on and 10% had sidelights on

(I fell into the no lights camp)

Really everybody in a car needs to be using the same level of lighting. I would vote for no lights in those particular conditions, but the mixture is really not good.

[quote="Lum"]OTOH, some clarification of lighting rules/use is needed urgently.

quote]

AGREE.

But ,in today's sue culture - safer to have them on.

OH! Here we go again!

Let's have a fag-packet calculation or some other pop at me, shall we?. Three-dab braking is crap and perhaps I had a petrol tank that only leaked at night...perhaps I should never have admitted to being an amateur rally driver; that would have been easier on me really!
Only people who drive on motorways know how to drive fast, whilst those of us who hammer up the single-track roads with grass emerging from the tarmac do so by sheer bloody luck. I wish that one of you smug sods was my navigator at the time - if you asked nicely, I might allow you a sick-bag.
I have run sections in daylight and at night in the same car - a 1600HF Lancia Delta - 13 mpg in daylight, 10 mpg night-time; about 20% difference...

DRIVING WITH YOUR LIGHTS ON USES MORE FUCKING JUICE, THE PERCENTAGE MAY DIFFER ACCORDING TO THE CAR AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES, OK?


FFS

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Aquila



Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat...

Steady on - no offence mate.

Perhaps someone can offer an explanation?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

the telemetry from the stage would be helpful...
a simple guess would be different throttle inputs due to different vision.

fwiw I had 2x100W Oscar + on an alfasud and couldn't tell the difference in consumption on or off but then I never tried a rally stage in that car.

Oh I WISH I could exercise Paul's self-restraint!

...but I can't, so up-yours mate!

My car is pretty old. When I boot it at night, I can sometimes see a bit of smoke in my mirror in the headlights of the car behind. I can't see any smoke in my mirror by day - even if the following car has its lights on. Therefore the ONLY possible logical conclusion is that my car only burns oil at night.

Maybe there are other factors to consider?

Maybe having improved lighting allows the car to be driven faster and more enthusiastically?

Adding electrical and mechanical loads to the engine can certainly affect the fuel consumption noticeably, but it seems unlikely that lights consuming less than 1% of the engine output would account for 20% of the fuel consumption. It's conceivable that the electrical load affected the engine management in some way, perhaps making it run rich (which could easily cause the fuel consumption to vary by 20% or more) but I guess you're going to say it was on carbs?

I think it's more likely that the difference in visibility caused you to drive the stage differently. Do you remember how the stage times varied between day and night? Do you see variations in fuel consumption when conditions vary in other ways?

Presumably it would be possible to show whether or not the lights made the difference by measuring the consumption under identical conditions with the lights on and off, and ideally this would be done in a typical car under typical driving conditions in order to be relevent to this topic. My own experience is that the fuel consumption varies hugely depending how much time I spend stuck in traffic etc so it might be hard to get conclusive answers anway. No doubt it would make a difference, but I would guess fractions of a percent rather than tens of percent.

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Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)

Sorry for the over-reaction, but there are many nit-pickers here who seem to miss the point of the argument - chewing on the bone and discarding the meat.
My Lancia had Tecalemit-Jackson mechanical fuel injection and Oselli assymetric high-lift cams. The lighting was 55/110W H4's in the main lamps and 2x150W wide/2x100W pencil Cibie Oscars bracket mounted with a pair of 110W Hella Comet 110 degree drivers under the bumper. We also had a 6" 55W KC Daylighter swivel mounted on the Navigator's A-post as a sign-reader and the same under the rear bumper as a reverse lamp.

Regardless of my estimate of the change in fuel usage between day and night-time use of this vehicle, the point is - we keep getting told of the dreadful effects of enjoying our motor cars, and that we should use them less and then we have this useless edict from our useless masters in Brussels ordering us to add to the burden of our engines (however small) and increase the emission of the utterly lethal CO2 in our daily journeys...WTF?

And to Mole:- En haut le vôtre aussi, assoyez-vous-y et le tour

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Aquila



Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat...

some people do seem to more concered with picking up on little points which are usually unimportant, rather than disscussing the big issue.Which is a real shame

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Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

I don't see that as a 'regular' problem at all. I think our 'attention to detail' is good - and long may it continue.

There's bound to be the odd case of nitpicking, but when you see it, if you see it, why not just respond and say - 'you're nitpicking'?

I can't see any nitpicking in this thread.

On the big issue, daytime running lights will be a significant national fuel consumer, but only as long as we're using tungsten filament lamps. We're fast movng towards LED lighting where power consumption is unlikely to be significant.

I hope and pray that any dayimte lights that we get stuck with are considerably lower brightness than dipped beam headlights - more like a 'super side light' and new versions would be likely to be LED based.

Still we don't need or want any of it and we should NEVER SURRENDER to eurocrats. (We'll fight them on the beaches...!)

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

At what point will they stop trying to remove danger from the public? All motion carries the inherent danger of having to dissipate kinetic enrgy, be it flying in an attack helicopter or 'extreme ironing'!
Removing aspects of danger from our lives weakens our respect for our position of control over that which we are operating and makes us rely on systems that may or may not work correctly if necessary.
The dreadful old joke of the bloke that finally saves enough money to buy himself a Porsche 911 springs to mind; in a spirit of generousity, he lends it to his son to impress his son's girlfriend with. His son returns at about three in the morning and greets his father with "Brilliant car, Dad - the airbags work perfectly...!"
Smidsy's will become 'you should have been looking where I was going' and speeding motorists will take manufacturers to Court for making cars that can exceed any speed limit...
At the school I work at, we have a bloke from RoSPA who comes to scare the shit out of sixth-formers who are learning to drive. Each of his PowerPoints starts with a black slide with the legend 'Speed Kiils' on it. When I passed through his class and pointed out to him that the Apollo astronauts exceeded 25,000mph in their journeys to and from the Moon and returned to Earth very much alive, his response was "There's always one, isn't there..."

Good old RoSPA!

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Aquila



Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat...

There should maybe be a third level of lighting - about the power of a 'standard' front cycle light, and it is this that is on all the time. You'd still have to switch on side and main lights as you do now.

At the moment a lot of cars are lit up at dusk. Many of them are much more visible than others, as a result of having badly adjusted lights or being 'cool init' twats with fog lights on.

So I propose, for the sake of visibility, that all drivers are required to adjust their headlights so that they shine into the eyes of oncoming vehicles, AND they must have front fog lights fitted and switched on at all times. This proposal will make vehicles significantly more visible than the EU one, and therefore must be adopted.

Sidelights as they are ATM are completely pointless as anything other than parking lights. The size and intensity of the lamps varies so much from car to car that you're better off switching straight to dipped beam anyway.

Maybe we'd just be better off having a minimum intensity and size for sidelights.

BTW, MGBGT, are you sure that the extra fuel consumption wasn't caused by the resistance caused by the photons being released by the lights? (awaits insuing nitpicking on quantum theory and the speed of light! )

Its already been said. Lighting vehicles is bloody pointless unless people actually take the time to LOOK. You can't substitute for the Mk 1 eyeball.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Precisely. Increased fuel usage = increased CO2 = increased tax revenue, (soon, no doubt), but just the increased fuel usage will do for now, thank you very much. I feel more shares in my favourite oil company coming on, plus some shares in vehicle light bulb manufacture.

As for safety; how does Sweden etc get on with DRL ?

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"Experience isn't everything - but it's most of it".

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Not about lights as such, but is it possible that air temperature affected the Lancia's fuel consumption? I know as fact that my Impreza generates significantly more bhp in cold conditions than it does in warm ones - because the air is more dense and more oxygen gets into the cylinders. If the engine management system detects this condition, then it automatically adds more fuel too to get get back to the optimal burn conditions, hence fuel consumption goes up. It doesn't however have to translate to faster speed, as the friction levels between tyres and road goes down at the same time. At the same time it is also more likely that in-cabin heating will be used at night again adding slightly to the power drain in addition to all of the lights being on. Whether this is true for a 1600HF Lancia Delta doing rally stages I don't know, but I like MGBGT, I can see that running with lights on (just like running with A/C) must increase fuel consumption.

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Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

A thought for those better versed in power calculations.

At a set RPM an engine generates X amount of power, with no accessories drawing power the throttle used is set.
Headlights switched on - the charging circuit senses this and increases current to the field coil of the alternator to redress the charge state of the battery.The alternator starts to absorb engine power - rpm drop, possibly infinitessmal, possibly not. To achieve the previous RPM, throttle opening has to be increased.
And this is a simple version - add A/C, use of power steering, heavier load on the electrics and the engine load must increase and as that happens, unless engine is over rated for car , fuel consumption must increase.

At one time a car electronic firm told me how to get more oomph from a car - stick resistance in the line from the thermal sensor - result ECU thinks that air is cold, and adds more fuel to mix also allowing more air to be taken in - result more power - and drastic lower fuel economy.

That's absolutely true. Any ancillaries operating draw their power (ultimately) from the engine so fuel consumption will go up accordingly. A couple of headlights won't make much difference though but a lot of cars all doing it would mean a significant amount of extra CO2, no question.

With regard to the resistor in the air temperature sensor, this will also work (a bit) but the engine won't be set up to take extra air as well to burn the extra fuel. The result is that you might get a tiny bit more power but (depending on the resistance) you could use a LOT more fuel. What normally happens if you do this for a long time is that the oil will get washed off the bores by all the extra un-burned fuel and the top half of your engine will get trashed. Once that happens, the unburned fuel gets past the piston rings and into the bottom half of your engine where it thins the oil out and trashes the bottom half too!! On a catalyst car it might also trash the cat too!

Foreign Law=Illegal law in England
nuf said?

just as I do tell those "Johnnies" where to stick it!
Twats!

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