Front Fog Lights

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If your headlights are crap, they provide additional light in an alternate beam pattern that can help visibility. However, if you've got decent headlights, they are pretty much pointless outside of fog.
 

mjt

mjt

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they are handy when driving on unlit roads at night :p

[TW]Fox;12887436 said:
As I explained, no they are not. Use your brain. Fogs illuminate a small area directly in front and to the side of your car far closer to your car than the reach of the normal headlights.

Therefore they are lighting up areas of the road so close to your car that, at speeds of 30+, you will have insufficient time to react to ANYTHING that shows up in your foglights yet not your headlights, making it completely and utterly pointless.

Come on guys, do the maths. If you suddenly spot something at the side of the road 1 metre from your car travelling at 60mph you are going to hit it and were driving too close to the side of the road anyway. No amount of foglights are going to change this.

yes, but even so, they still help.
i now live in the middle of nowhere and drive most of the time in the dark on empty unlit country roads, so i drive with main beam on most of the time anyway

but even so, the fog lights do help, even if only a little bit.
i agree that they only illuminate stuff that's by the side of the road and you probably couldn't do anything to avoid it, but even so, it is useful to see the side of the road, especially as the roads i drove along are quite narrow, thus helping to see where the tarmic ends and the ditch starts

say what you like, but there is a reason why everyone here drives with both main beam and fogs when it's dark. if you have them, use them. there's no harm in having more light
 
Soldato
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yes, but even so, they still help.
i now live in the middle of nowhere and drive most of the time in the dark on empty unlit country roads, so i drive with main beam on most of the time anyway

but even so, the fog lights do help, even if only a little bit.
i agree that they only illuminate stuff that's by the side of the road and you probably couldn't do anything to avoid it, but even so, it is useful to see the side of the road, especially as the roads i drove along are quite narrow, thus helping to see where the tarmic ends and the ditch starts

say what you like, but there is a reason why everyone here drives with both main beam and fogs when it's dark. if you have them, use them. there's no harm in having more light

Agreed, I use the fogs when on the back lanes at night because the main beam doesn't put too much light right in front of the car. Can't see the edge of the road too well so driving at 60 is a bit scary, having the fogs on makes things much more comfortable. I do however only use them in conjunction with the main beam.
 
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But light right in front of you is worthless, what are you you supposed to do with it? You need to see ahead of you not right in front of you. Lets be really generous and say you've got super awesome fogs which give you a whole 1.5 metres of extra light directly in front of you.

At 60mph you are travelling at nearly 27 metres a SECOND. That gives you what, barely a few tenths of a second to see something, react to it, and take avoiding action.

As I said, utterly pointless. Being able to see directly in front of you is completely useless. You need to be able to see further away, which your headlights do anyway.

And unlike full beam, its not quick and easy to turn fogs off when a car comes the other way. So the 'must see 1 metre in front' crowd just leave them on. Greaaat.

Front foglights are like England flags on cars. They make bad drivers easier to spot.
 
Associate
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Yep I am also getting really annoyed by this. Again there used to be the cool factor of young lads in sport hatchbacks but now it seems to be a lot of other people who I can only assume think its some extra lights to make their journey better.

1, some do it with only the side lights on (mentioned above), this is worse than having the fogs off and the main headlight on.

2, at night, with wet roads it doesn’t just annoy me, it also bounces the light that is aimed downwards (so avoiding the fog and giving a better view of the road in foggy condition) into the oncoming traffic and dazzling them

3, the amount of people driving at dawn or dusk without any lights on at all! I am more aware now then ever as we have all witnessed the drop in driving standards and I want to be able to say I did my best to be noticed in poor lit conditions.

It got to me last year, so much that now when I see an oncoming car with the fogs on I give them a full beam from me (not just a flash) to let them know I can also be selfish too and improve my view at the expense of blinding everyone else. This is coming from a range rover with 3 pair of addition spot lights (2 sets above cab). I still don’t think they get the point tho and yes I agree with one of the other posters here that its just a way for my to ID the real poor drivers out there.

One thing I did notice when on holiday in Spain a few week back, my bros hire car switched the fogs on when he turned tightly, not like 3 point turn tight but just round country lanes, it switched only the one fog light at a time, which was the side he was turning. Now I thought this was good, but only if it did it under 10 mph so limiting it to car parking or similar not at the 40 mph he was doing. Odd.
 
Soldato
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i've never been blinded by fog lights. i get blinded by people with badly adjusted or chaved up lights though.

to the above poster: you actually endanger people on the roads with your actions. very sad!

Once again, just because it doesn't affect you, why assume it affects no one else?
do go on.. tell me how/why it affects you?

Is wearing a cap backwards against any sort of law?

Is inappropriate usage of lights against the highway code?

When you can answer the above you will see why some people get annoyed.

Smoking weed's against the law but i don't give a **** about that either. Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's necessarily correct


B@
 
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Soldato
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One thing I did notice when on holiday in Spain a few week back, my bros hire car switched the fogs on when he turned tightly, not like 3 point turn tight but just round country lanes, it switched only the one fog light at a time, which was the side he was turning. Now I thought this was good, but only if it did it under 10 mph so limiting it to car parking or similar not at the 40 mph he was doing. Odd.

I was watching an episode of Top Gear the other day where each of them were they were all driving cars belonging to normal members of the public. One of them had a merc A-Class which did that same with its foglights; turned on the right one when turning right, and left when turning left.
 
Associate
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i've never been blinded by fog lights. i get blinded by people with badly adjusted or chaved up lights though.

to the above poster: you actually endanger people on the roads with your actions. very sad!

B@


clearly, it is the point. If you cant beat them join them. But on a serious note it will clean up the population if i manage to get rid of a few idiots :D

Its declining because poeple just look out for speed cameras now and not drive in fear of the plod telling them off like i did 10 years ago. Now you can get away with lots of stuff and thats why its become more of a problem.
 
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I don't get blinded by foglights but it is irritating when a car sat opposite you at the lights is burning your retinas out with foglights for no real reason. Some cars have HUGE fogs as well, hello Peugeot 406.
 
Soldato
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I am more annoyed at the moment at people who seem to think they don't need to use lights at all despite it being dark or think side lights are enough.

OR

People who have foglights yet don't use them when its actually foggy?!
 
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[TW]Fox;12888679 said:
I don't get blinded by foglights but it is irritating when a car sat opposite you at the lights is burning your retinas out with foglights for no real reason. Some cars have HUGE fogs as well, hello Peugeot 406.

that i agree with! in traffic it's stupid, because you aren't even bloody moving!

B@
 

mrk

mrk

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People who have foglights yet don't use them when its actually foggy?!

Why would that annoy you though? Unless of course it was an old car or a car with dodgy main headlamps that were dim. Obviously you’ve noticed the car to begin with because it’s normal lights were on so the task of seeing the car during foggy conditions has been accomplished!

On cars with Xenons it’s even less of a problem, the xenon beams appear to be visible from a greater distance with no fogs on in foggy conditions than halogen headlights with fogs on I found when driving on the motorway during heavy fog a number of times trekking to London and back via the A3. You could probably even do away with foglights on such cars.

So basically, everyone should get Xenon headlights :p
 
Soldato
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I don't care. They endangered me first.
wow, what a great attitude to have.

Plus, you said that you do this to all people who have their fogs on. maybe 1 in 100 MIGHT cause your eyes to glare more than regular dipped lights, so your just being a bit of a dick really.

B@
 

mrk

mrk

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why are there seperate switches for front and rear fogs? obviously if you need them they should both come on? Or is this just my car?

Think it's a EU only thing as US cars don't have to have foglights on the back according to this !

IIRC only one foglight on the back should be made available on UK cars is that right ? I checked mine when I got the car to make sure all the lights work and the rear foglights come on on both sides so maybe the old owner did some DIY to light both of them ?
 
Soldato
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yes, but even so, they still help.
i now live in the middle of nowhere and drive most of the time in the dark on empty unlit country roads, so i drive with main beam on most of the time anyway

but even so, the fog lights do help, even if only a little bit.
i agree that they only illuminate stuff that's by the side of the road and you probably couldn't do anything to avoid it, but even so, it is useful to see the side of the road, especially as the roads i drove along are quite narrow, thus helping to see where the tarmic ends and the ditch starts

say what you like, but there is a reason why everyone here drives with both main beam and fogs when it's dark. if you have them, use them. there's no harm in having more light

Ditto, this is the when I use them - of course dropping my full beam when necessary.


Moorron said:
It got to me last year, so much that now when I see an oncoming car with the fogs on I give them a full beam from me (not just a flash) to let them know I can also be selfish too and improve my view at the expense of blinding everyone else. This is coming from a range rover with 3 pair of addition spot lights (2 sets above cab). I still don’t think they get the point tho and yes I agree with one of the other posters here that its just a way for my to ID the real poor drivers out there.

Should have run them off the road too after giving him a good dose of main beam - that'd would have shown him what for.
 
Soldato
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It's more like 3 in 5 that will blind me. If it's a wide'ish road like most A roads then it's rarely ever a problem. If it's a tight B road then generally all and any fog light will blind in my low car. Bare in mind about 70% of my driving is on B roads...
 
Man of Honour
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IIRC only one foglight on the back should be made available on UK cars is that right ? I checked mine when I got the car to make sure all the lights work and the rear foglights come on on both sides so maybe the old owner did some DIY to light both of them ?

The minimum requirement is for a single foglight but many cars have two. BMW's have two.
 
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