16 Aug 2014

And Then I Saw The Light….

With all the driving one’s been doing recently, or two’s been doing if one was to include my little nest of a co-pilot, one’s become increasingly aware of the amazing number of fellow travellers who, with the sun shining brightly down, as it does, insist on drive with their lights on! Some with just sidelights but many with dipped headlights and more than just a few with full beams!

Have they forgotten they had their lights on? I doubt it as this seems to have nothing to do with the conditions these folk have just left as, when we advance to their recently departed position, we don’t suddenly find ourselves in the dark, in a fogbank or any other sort of restricted visibility and I refuse to believe they all left where they’re coming from, and we’re going towards, before sunrise.

So what’s it all about then? I do realise that many new ‘top of the range’ cars have what  they call LED daytime running lights and that’s something else I don’t pretend to understand, so can only assume that the side and/or headlight fellows are hoping to convince reverse direction travellers that, rather than only having the ‘basic’ model,  they’ll be  fooled into thinking they have fancy LED daytime running lights and thus it must be a top of the range, super-duper, over hyped, over priced model.

I find it quite extraordinary that cars today come without a starting handle but, at a price, you can have lights looking like a little string of pearls for driving in daylight. 

Damn! Does mine have ‘em? I have no idea as I’m always inside the car! Double damn!! I’d better read the manual. I need to find it because something along the lines of, “Right dear, I just want you to stand in the road while I drive towards you. If you see any lights, just nod. Nod quickly in case I miss the break peddle, okay?” isn’t going to fly……

Quote;  Marshall McLuhan.

“The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound.”

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Foggy

This nonsense is another load of tripe handed down to us serfs by the Tyranny.

FYI 2008/89/EC applies
A Friend

Ripper said...

Daytime lights were originally a thing of us bikers. You could always see a motorcycle coming by its dipped beam and its probably prevented many accidents. Now, we blend in with the sea of headlamps just as we blended in the beginning without them. What is now a fashion fad for the car driver is a safety thing for us.

Motorcycles no longer have light switches, the dipped beam comes on with the ignition. However I have fitted mine with a headlamp controller to ease life for the battery.

There is a movement within the EU to make us wear hi viz. If that happens, expect to find hi viz for the car soon after. I expect it will be applied like those fake eye lashes that car drivers have been putting around their headlamps, which go with the red noses on radiator grilles.

Mac said...

Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for the info. It was floating around in my head that it could possibly something to do with the lunatic fringe:
From 2011 onwards, DLRs will be mandatory for all new cars and small delivery vans in the EU. Trucks and buses will follow in August 2012. Existing vehicles will not have to be retrofitted. Currently, 17 EU countries already have some form of DRL legislation.

Seems it’ll work in the opposite way to the plan mooted in Ireland some time ago when they proposed switching to driving on the right. Their plan was to start with busses and trucks and if that was a success cars would follow.....

Mac said...

Ripper,
If governments can live in a huge bubble world, why can’t someone devise individual protective bubbles? Then we could all bounce about like the total nut-cases they obviously believe we are.
Wait a minute!! Are you saying that eyelashes on headlights isn’t yet mandatory? Damn!! So I can take 'em off then?

Caratacus said...

Ref. Hi-viz ... a couple of years ago I was working in a large council operated yard. The sun was out and I was sweating cobs in the thirty-odd degree heat, so I eschewed the hi-viz vest for once and left it in the truck. About ten minutes later a council pickup hove into view with a flurry of dust and disgorged an irate and well-padded manager. "YOU'RE NOT WEARING YOUR HI-VIZ VEST!" he screamed. I agreed that this was so, and asked why it was necessary, it being uncommon hot and all. "So you can be seen, you thick barsteward", he replied. I then asked which office was his and he pointed back to a set of portakabins approximately 300 yards away. I squinted ... raised my hand to shield the sun and remarked that if he could see me at that distance the hi-viz vest was redundant really. He then became rather batey, until I tired of the exchange and told him to sack me. He did pause a bit at this - I am self-employed, you see, and therefore not only unsackable but probably unemployable too :-) I do enjoy baiting jobsworths ... it is a failing.

Mac said...

Caratacus,
That sums it all up beautifully my friend and you've reminded me of something I'll post tonight.
"I do enjoy baiting jobsworths ... it is a failing." But immensely enjoyable and 'they' do tend to beg for it.