Safe Speed Forums

Not even just a bit? You can't think of a *single* scenario where a SMIDSY could be turned into a non-event just by the use of lights?



Only if the light levels and/or visibility conditions are such that, given a suitable amount of observation time, it is actually physically possible to see them. In, say, heavy rain or dense fog, how close would they need to get before they'd be visible? And how far away would they need to be visible at their current speed such that you'd know you could safely pull out into the road ahead of them? It's no good only being able to see them if by then it's already too late to prevent the accident...



Whilst the emergency services do have their share of SMIDSY's, that shouldn't detract from the genuine benefits that flashing lights/sirens offer. A flashing light is more noticeable in your peripheral vision, and a siren may be heard even when the vehicle is entirely out of vision. Would you choose to drive around a blind bend on a single-track road without first sounding your horn and/or flashing your mainbeams?

Granted, some road users are entirely beyond help, but that doesn't mean we should give up trying to attract the attention of the ones who just need the little extra sensory nudge they get from our lights/horn to realise we're there.

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Chris

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

Since when did flipping on 110W of head lights constitute 'lighting up like a christmas tree'? I'm not saying that I drive or ride around with my lights on all the time, and I CERTAINLY don't agree with the current fassion for hard wiring lights on bikes (asside from the fack that it f*cks batteries), but if visibility is poor then I'd rather be seen that not.

As far as thinking of other road users? Yes, to a point, but there comes a time when self-preservation rules.

Tell me something - does your FJS have a major wiring fault or something? Or do you just jave bionic eyes?

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

Only if you assume nothing else has changed and that, in the absence of headlight use, the number of SMIDSY's would have remained static anyway.




The only way I could hit an unlit parked car is by driving forwards or backwards into it, and in both those cases the lights on *my* car will illuminate the unlit car quite nicely, thanks very much.

Now explain how *my* lights will help me see someone approaching me when I'm sat at a t-junction wanting to pull out onto the main road. Also explain how the sighting distance isn't important given that I'll be blocking the main road for the same length of time whether the visibility is 10m or 1000m.





Point being that it DOES attract the attention of people who aren't specifically looking for the vehicle, but who have it in their peripheral vision anyway, and so increases the number of people who WILL be aware of its presence compared to the number who'd be aware if no flashing lights were used.




I see. You're assuming the person coming the other way has slowed down sufficiently as well and wouldn't benefit at all from some advance warning of your presence. I don't like leaving my safety in the hands of assumptions like that.

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Chris

Well this one could run and run couldn't it. What with the EU proposing compulsory Daytime Running Lights (DRL) for all vehicles, possibly compulsory by 2010.

So I did a bit of a search to find the EU proposal, and found instead an Anti-DRL site apparently being hosted through Paul - and I didn't know a thing about it.

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/~dadrl/introduction.html

Having read through this debate, I have come down on ths side of putting on dipped headlights in conditions of poor visibility. When the other motorist drives into you because he couldn't see you in the gloom, it goes to court and the barrister for the other side asks if you had your lights on, then the "no lights" argument may not sound too convincing.

At some point you do, presumably, have to put your lights on as visibility falls to a critical level. How do you decide this point?

In general, I think I would risk the contrast masking of someone with no lights on for the benefit of being seen myself. After all, we all do this in the dark anyway.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Hmm - that was interesting! What an absolutely rediculous idea. Assuming DRL do become mandetory, what do the EU propose to do about vehicles manufactured before 2010?

I'm still waiting for it to become mandetory on all bikes rather than just new ones.

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

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

I can only assume from this that necessary headlight use is dangerous too, and that we should all stop driving when it requires the use of dipped headlights!!

The colour of the vehicle, the rake of the screen, and the surroundings all have an influence on how easily a vehicle can be seen in poor visibility.

In a torrential downpour, a driver might go from dry to wet in seconds, and then back again, or a steady drizzle can be worse, because the droplets are fine enough to remain intact, rather than spreading into a uniform film of water before being swept by the wipers.
Here in Cumbria we get extremely localised visibility because of the hills and valleys. In fact in my pictures, the large body of cloud ahead is the result of one valley (Ings) being joined by Kentmere valley, from where the prevailing weather system was sweeping down from on the day.
Under such conditions, use of dipped headlights is a sensible precaution, which does nobody any harm. The oncoming minibus and cars can clearly be seen, with no inconvenience to other motorists.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

FJS Rider, my argument and thoughts on the matter, agree with Sixy and Ernest.

Yes it is a habbit, as a cyclist I used to get SMIDSY'd a lot, I started putting lights on my bike and found that it was happening less and also less than my other cylist friends.

I do the same in my car and have found similar, I do note that other road users point out that I have my lights on, great they have seen me and are aware of me.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

Is this vehicles in between the lit up vehicles, or behind a solitary lit vehicle?
If it is the former, then usually, the lights of the vehicle behind disclose the unlit vehicle. If it is the latter, then clearly the unlit vehicle should be illuminated!
If NO other lit vehicles are present, and the unlit vehicle cannot be clearly seen, then obviously there is a need for lights of some kind, to reveal the presence of the vehicle at the earliest opportunity.

Frankly I'm very surprised at the obvious lack of rigorous thought about this topic from a group of road users who are apparently concerned about 'safety'!

I am becoming accustomed to seeing a few motorists who see lighting up time as being a hard and fast rule, and only turning on their lights when somebody flashes or hoots the horn at them becuase they can barely be seen! Presumably these drivers fail to realise that the oncoming vehicles they see with lights on, would not be so obvious if the lights were off - lack of observation at best - driving without due care more like!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Umm, selectively editing my words and failing to answer the point I was actually raising won't do anything to persuade me your side of the argument is one worth considering...


So, let me ask this. Given the increasing use of thicker and more steeply raked A-pillars on modern cars, which have the notable effect of increasing the driver blind spot when trying to scan for oncoming traffic at roundabouts and other junctions with similar geometries, plus the possible increased risk of smaller vehicles being masked by larger ones - something which, if true, would only get worse as traffic levels increase over time - plus the genuine problems we have at certain junctions where roadside furniture, fencing and vegetation are now blocking sightlines which used to be clear, it seems that the likelihood of a SMIDSY occurring is higher now than in the days when roads were less heavily trafficed, A-pillars were thinner and less intrusive in the drivers eyeline, and the roadsides were less cluttered.

So, if the use of headlights is also a problem, then what factors are we left with which could allow the SMIDSY problem to remain stable?





That doesn't fit in with my personal observations. Take for instance the journey home this evening - several hundred vehicles had driven by in the opposite direction without grabbing any more of my attention than the buildings at the side of the road. The ambulance that then went by, on the other hand, was instantly noticeable, specifically because of its flashing lights - I saw the lights first, THEN the vehicle they were attached to. If movement alone was sufficient to attract attention, why wasn't my attention as comprehensively grabbed by all the other moving vehicles as it was by the ambulance?

Another example, in which movement can't be a factor since there isn't any movement involved. If Windows wants to attract my attention to a program minimised on the toolbar, it flashes the toolbar entry for that program. Doesn't do anything else to it - doesn't make it bigger, doesn't stary flying it around the screen, doesn't in fact alter its size or position by so much as a single pixel, all it does is sit there and flash. My gaze can be focussed on the furthest part of the screen from the toolbar, yet the flashing in my peripheral vision is all that's required to drag my attention down to the toolbar.

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Chris

OK, slightly drifting off topic here but steeply raked "A" pillars tend to make the obscuration problem better rather than worse. There are tyype approval requirements limiting the amount of obscuration that an "A" pillar can make and the more steeply raked it is, the less chance that it will be completely obscuring both eyes at once.

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

True, this is an unintended misinterpretation of your comments on my part - apologies for that. However, you did say...



Which doesn't quite fit with your stance on headlight usage being a bad thing. And if they make no difference, does that mean they generally make no difference, or that in some conditions they make matters worse but in others they make matters better?




Can we perhaps define exactly what sort of conditions we both mean when we consider headlight usage to be good or bad? You seem to be talking about daylight as it that means ANY time when the sun is above the horizon, regardless of any other conditions (weather, smoke, dust etc) which may be acting to reduce visibility. I don't have any argument against you in regards to the use of headlights when conditions really don't require them, but I do think there's plenty of times during what would be classed as "daylight" on a purely time-of-day basis when the use of headlights does improve vehicle visibility.




That's all well and good from the riders point of view, but it requires the rider to be diligent in checking for this every time. It's also avoidable from the drivers point of view if they're diligent in checking around the blind spot every time. The point was, it's one more thing riders and drivers have to be aware of, one more factor that can contribute to an increase in SMIDSY's, compared to how things were before there was a problem which needed to be avoided.




Some if it is, but I doubt all the street furniture is placed specifically with the goal of deliberately blocking sightlines. An awful lot of it seems merely to have been placed in the first available spot (or even in the first spot regardless of anything else around it - blocking not just the sightline through the junction, but also the sightline to other street furniture the road users actually needs to see - signs, traffic lights etc.) without any thought to its effect.




I haven't disagreed with this previously, and I'm not about to start now. I'll simply re-iterate the point I've been trying to make all along here.

If the ambulance hadn't been displaying flashing lights, I'd not have been aware of its presence.

Just as was the case with all the other vehicles that went by, I'd have "seen" it only as another anonymous generic piece of background visual noise in my peripheral vision. Had you then asked me if an ambulance had driven by, I'd honestly not have known. It was SPECIFICALLY the flashing lights which made me focus on the ambulance and allowed me to actually SEE it as a discrete object against the background.




Whereas I seem to pick it up almost immediately pretty much all of the time... maybe you're using a monitor so large that the taskbar falls out of your peripheral vision, or could there be differences in our visual processing which makes you less susceptible to flashing as a means of attracting attention?

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Chris

I must go and see my optician - I dont appear to have that problem!


At this location, oncoming vehicles can be detected if their lights shine on the cars at the far end - at night, or in the evening! It saves a lot of reversing!

Aside from any other variation in conditions, try watching the sun set behind a 3,000 foot mountain, or east facing side of a valley, where the sun sets a good deal earlier than the specified time.
Or drive along the A592 between Newby Bridge and Bowness on Windemere, under the trees, and see how many idiots have dinged the wall because they cant see where they are going (or which way the road turns) in the twilight, simply because despite the darkness under the trees, they refuse to put their lights on!


Same road, same time of day, on the same day but different drainage on the road. Result? Different visibility - and if viewed through the side window, or if the dash is reflected in the screen, then lights help to highlight the presence of a car sooner.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?