Don’t Rely on Daytime Running Lights to Get You Safely Through the Dark
Just because the days are getting shorter, doesn’t mean your drive time is. You still have to put in a full day of work, which means often means your drive to and from work will be covered in darkness. To get you safely through limited daylight, you must rely on your car’s headlights. Weak, ill-positioned or downright burned out headlights will put your driving safety and the safety of others sharing the road with you or pedestrians near you at risk. Another way you’re putting yourself and others at risk when light is limited or non-existent — not turning your headlights on at all.
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“Many drivers never turn on their headlights at all, even when it’s completely dark outside. You may have seen these drivers — and shaken your head at them. The culprits are LED-backlit gauge clusters and LED daytime running lights,” reports Edmunds contributor Julia Eddington. ”Most car manufacturers now include daytime running lights as standard equipment and most employ LED lighting. But daytime running lights are not the same as headlights, and mistaking the two can mean a ticket, or worse,”
When you rely on your daytime running lights instead of turning on your headlights to navigate the dark, you’re not doing anyone any favors.
“They don’t illuminate the road the way headlights do. And when the daytime running lights are in use, the taillights (and license plate lights) aren’t illuminated at all, meaning that your car is nearly invisible from behind,” Eddington notes.
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To effectively illuminate the road before you and make you as visible to other drivers as possible, Eddington recommends checking that all your taillight and headlight bulbs are in working order, consistently utilize your car’s automatic headlight setting if possible, understand which dashboard symbol is for your headlights and daytime running lights to remind you which are on, and to get into the habit of turning on your car’s headlights when dusk starts to descend.
News Source: Edmunds
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