Car headlights at night

Stoner, I’m off work now (and slightly beered up) but here goes.

If you alter the lighting of your car from the manufacturers original specification without legal approval then you are effectively making the car illegal, it can also can screw the insurance too. This does apply even to classic cars when they are built to different specs and legislation compared to present day vehicles.

Moving the reflectors and fitting new turn indicators in a different position is probably a risk as the car could fail its MOT or be classified as unroadworthy if you are pulled over by the police ( if they know what they are looking at…)

Unless you get approval to do this by getting the car SVA’d and even then its not quite as simple as “I will just move them to this place as that’s where I have space” However I would not recommend getting a classic car SVA’d either as it could fail on something totally different as its being tested as a modern car.

I could be wrong as I’m used to working on new cars where we have to fully homologate stuff to stricter rules

To be honest I would leave well alone and use hand signals! 🙂

cheers muddy@rseguy.

Assuming (quite reasonably) that the fuzz wouldnt know the difference between the locations of the original rear lamps & indicators, then I guess it comes down to having a tame MOT garage. Which fortunately we do have. But it’s still unclear on what basis the MOT could be failed anyway.

I drive an auto and usually keep my foot on the brake when stopped in traffic. It’s a tall pick up too so suspect the lights are in peoples eyes.

I hadn’t even considered it could be a problem before. I’ll do my best to remember from now on.

Beggars belief. People use fog lights at the wrong time” “people use their brakes in queues”.”I flash people to tell them they are wrong”.

Are you lot very old? I see these things all the time, and just let them get on with it. Someone using their foglights does me no harm.

You lot would be shouting at cyclists for not having bells if you weren’t cyclists yourselves.

I don’t do that well with lights at night, I often feel dazzled. However I’ve never felt dazzled by brake lights in a queue. Well, maybe once or twice when very close to the car in front maybe, not sure.

On the brake light thing it would make sense for cars, especially autos to have brake lights that dim after say 20 seconds of being applied when the car is stationary. With most cars having 3rd brake lights there should be no confusion with the rear lights and a simple release and reapply would reset the pedal showing the driver had inched a bit and then stopped again.

That’s not a great idea if you stop somewhere slightly unexpected and the next car is more than 20 seconds behind.

In 20 seconds in a manual someone may have stopped and put handbrake on so no brake light at all. Which leads me to my next point that I would also argue that the handbrake should also turn on the brake lights at the dimmer setting. Brake lights on modern cars, especially LED ones, are seriously bright so no need to have them at full brightness all the time. I do like the hazard light function on modern cars when detecting an emergency stop. A variable brightness stop light would be good too.

+ if you are stopped somewhere unexpected then that is what hazard lights are for as you are a potential hazard.

Can’t stand people sitting on the footbrake in traffic. Totally unnecessary and really dazzling. It’s worse if you’re on a bike filtering up the outside of a lane of stationary traffic, the red glare can be horrendous.

By all means keep the footbrake applied until the car behind has also come to a stop behind you but then you should apply the handbrake and release the footbrake out of courtesy and to avoid dazzling them.

But then most people on the roads are lacking in any courtesy (and common sense) most of the time anyway.

Been driving for over 20 years now. I don’t think I have ever once felt dazzled by a brake light.

Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with some of you lot?