On 24/10/2019 17:16, NY wrote:
"dennis@home" wrote in message
news
Not legal though.
If you have to have parking lights on they need to be both sides.

Has that always been the case or is it a fairly recent law which
posts-dates the time when clip-on red/white parking lights and
indicator-operated one-sided side/tail lights were common?

Don't know but at least 1989

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1...lation/24/made

Hmm. So a lot of VWs with that feature might not actually have been
legal in the UK (well, that feature wasn't legal), and presumably other
manufacturers discontinued it or disabled it for the UK market.

I'm always surprised that the definition of "position lamp" doesn't
include rear fog lights, since they are the first thing you see, long
before the tail lights, as you come up behind a car in fog and need to
estimate its distance by the lateral spacing of the position lights. But
most cars sold today have only one fog light on the offside (and often
one reversing light on the nearside). All my older cars had bulb holders
and wires for both sides, with only the nearside fog light bulb missing
(which I always replaced), but my present car doesn't even have
provision for a nearside fog light.

Fog lights are covered in the fog light section.


The Construction and Use / Vehicles and Lighting regulations are most
noteworthy for what they *don't* prohibit. If I was making those
regulations I'd mandate that all lights (including rear fog and
reversing) must be in pairs, and that every front and back indicator
must be placed as far as possible from any other *bright* light
(brake/fog/headlight - tail/side are OK) so it can be seen even when the
car is braking, or when it has its headlights on. Sadly a lot of modern
cars have indicators that are right next to the brake lights (VW Golfs
are bad for this) and integrated in the headlight housing rather than
separate from it.

The primary purpose of those lights is to be seen, and if they cannot be
seen because of other lights, then the design is bad and regulations
should prohibit it. In days gone by (eg 1970s), it was common for side
and indicator to be within or below the front bumper - well away from
the headlights. Not any more - there's probably a rule that says this is
specifically forbidden, which is utterly counter-intuitive.

The wife's astra has the front indicators below the bumper. I thought
they were fog lights when we first looked at the carin the showroom.


DRLs can be a problem, although most cars seem to dim/extinguish the DRL
on the side which is indicating - sometimes the absence of DRL is seen
before the flashing of the orange indicator ;-)