Despite many years of advice and even laws to change the situation, many people apparently still don’t get it that headlights are not just to help them see where they are going!
The other job of headlamps is at least as important, and that is to increase safety by making vehicles more conspicuous so that other road users will see them approaching. Put simply, there are still far to many people who very unsafely drive in rain or other bad weather without putting their lights on.
The first photo above and the words below are by well-known truck driver and Facebook blogger Ryan Douglas Dorius — with his full permission, of course — and show how deadly the problem is from that point of view:
“Okay friends that aren’t truck drivers, I have a public service announcement. This is what the mirrors on a big truck look like in the rain. I’m a hundred feet long and sometimes can’t see half that far back, so if you don’t have your headlights on, I can’t see you! I also weigh 129,000 pounds, so if I change lanes and tangle with you, I’ll win…I’ll probably get the ticket, but that won’t mean a lot to you if you end up dead. Just use your head and if it’s raining, snowing, or foggy, TURN YOUR HEADLIGHTS ON.”
Read more from Ryan here.
It would be nice to think that Daytime Running Lights [DRL] would solve a big part of this problem, but DRLs are themselves often flawed and this can cause a different type of dangerous collisions. When time permits, another post will be added here about that aspect of these serious driving dangers.
