Too bad this wasn’t posted yesterday. I could hardly believe some drivers yesterday, driving with no headlights in the fog.
Just like their headlights, not too bright.
Visibility up at the east Mr. G was down to about 100 yards at times. People were still doing 80 or 90 KpH in that stuff. No wonder there are accidents in the fog, people seem to have a death wish!

I drove from Quesnel to PG last night and the fog and freezing fog were horrible. The only good part of the drive was the amazing fireworks show in Cinema,just South of Dunkley Lumber. Was impressive. The owner of the store and campground apparently does it every year. We’ll done

A fog advisory was actually issued yesterday evening, this media didn’t bother to post that I guess. It’s over now.

Daytime running lights (low intensity headlight power) is great during normal conditions, and with most vehicles the tail lights are not on at all. The auto manufacturers should think about making full power headlights and illuminated tail lights a standard across the board on all vehicles regardless of day time or night time conditions.

The number of idiots driving around and not turning headlights on (full power) is just amazing, the auto light feature only turns the headlights on and doesn’t turn on the tail lights at all. So enough fog and an idiot that thinks they can be seen in low visibility conditions equals a good tail end collision.

Something so simple to do, but yet they care more about on-board nav and rear view cameras and other needless junk.

It’s been foggy in the area for over a week!

Professional makes some good points; however, the only reason we have daytime running lights now is because of government regulations. There are still American states where mandatory daylight running lights are not required and the ‘option’ of daytime running lights is extra.

Then there are those folks that disable their running lights; haven’t quite figured out the motivation for that.

There was a group of CNC students a few years back that developed and patented a retrofit for daytime running lights for vehicles that were built prior to the current regs. Not sure where that ended up but I think their start-up was bought out by a bigger outfit.

Professional – wrong. In Toyota and maybe some Ford and Dodge you may be correct but on GM the auto position turns on everything and the same for the VW we own. If I cover the sensor on the dash with a glove I can turn on all my lights – park and headlights when I tow a trailer without touching the switch.

Yep “auto” turns on all lights when its dark enough and that fog was definitely thick enough to trigger mine (ford) last night. Anybody with just the DRLs on and no tail lights simply didn’t have their lights turned on.

Well Slinky, I am not wrong, but actually right, considering there are more older vehicles out there that still have the old system. The manufacturers are smartening up “slowly” as they make vehicles more “idiot proof” (present company excluded from the “idiot” statement). Mind you I still turn everything on regardless of it being day time or not (professional driver habit).

Trivia: Daytime running light were never a consideration in the automotive industry. It was a policy with “old school” bus drivers (actually the legend has it as being Grey Hound Bus Lines). In the day the only vehicles, due to there color, that were hard to see, were buses. Due to the number of head on collisions, the idea of running in the day time with the head lights on was adopted by Grey Hound. The policy was, when traveling, to use low beams in your direction of travel and when passing to turn on your high beams when in the apposing lane during a passing maneuver.

This would make the oncoming driver aware that something was coming at them in there lane and they would slow down to allow the pass to be completed. High beams causes a person to over estimate the speed of the on coming vehicle and by nature they would slow down(so the logic was intended to work in theory). With this new policy being used a marked decline in head on collisions resulted, this policy was soon adopted by the commercial fleet truck drivers.

In Europe vehicles equipped with “fog lights” must be equipped with “rear fog lights” (these are high output red tail lights) which activate when the driver turns on the front fog lights. This gives earlier warning to the following vehicle in poor weather conditions (snow storm, heavy fog etc.). This is another option that the north american manufacturers will eventually include as standard equipment in concert with added cup holders.

You’re bang on Professional.
It was first introduced by Greyhound. 30%reduction in accidents. That professional driver habit is a good one. I use it too, all the time.
One beef I have though, is that they first incoporated the DRLs into the highbeams. That was a really stupid idea. It should have been lowbeams at full power.
You can judge the distance and speed of oncoming traffic in about half a second, if they are using lowbeams. With highbeams, depending on how bright they are and how they are aimed, it can take many seconds to determine that.
This is critical for truck drivers who need to pass a slower vehicle. They need much more room to be able to safely pass another vehicle than a regular four wheeler does.