There are two things here:

1. DRLs - as heather stated, they're now basically compulsory. Some cars have small LEDs, some just have the dipped headlamps on. There are specific rules about position, intensity, beam pattern of light etc.

2. Auto-lights. Some of the VAG cars come with "autolights" - certainly mine does. This turns the headlights on when it becomes dark enough. A long tunnel may trigger them, as does going above 80mph. As part of its feature, there's an anti-dazzle function. The idea is that when it is very bright, other road users may be dazzled by the light and hence the lights are on to make you more aware of their presence. A useless function IMO but if I turn it off, I lose the other features.

They don't have a choice.

European Commission Directive 2008/89/EC


From here (emphasis mine)

Yes, we can all thank the Swedes for that wonderful Directive. Tits.

I'm glad that running lights are compulsory. It lets you know that a vehicle is "alive".

Genuine example:

woman sat in car apparently waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before going around a parked car.

I waited behind her.

Turned out she was actually parked about 2 feet from the curb causing an obstruction to everyone, waiting to collect her child from school and drive the little precious darling 500 yards home.

If all cars had running lights, then I would have known the car was turned off and not going anywhere, despite so obviously not being parked...

I mean seriously - what harm do they do? Anyone that complains about them surely needs to find one of the billions of things that actually do cause harm and worry about that instead...

Is there an issue with them using the DRLs?
They appear to be working just as they're meant to.

The problem, from my observations at least, is that most DRL fitted cars only show running lights to the front. The tail lights are not lit.

It would make more sense if they went all the way around, like fairy lights. Or at the very least, one to port and starboard like a boat or plane.

There's no reason why she couldn't be parked up with either the ignition on or the motor running - the drls would still have been lit. That's just poor parking and requires a special kind of idiot to achieve it!

I'm probably, indeed hopefully, in a small minority on here in so far as I have actually been a pedestrian in an RTA. Note I don't use the word 'victim' for a very good reason. I got hit by a car because I was looking in the wrong direction.

This was at roughly 5PM. In December. As you can imagine, it was quite dark by then. So the car would have had it's lights on. I still didn't see it, despite it presenting illumination significantly more powerful than DRLs. Because I was looking in the wrong direction.

I'm going to make an assumption here. I'm going to assume all of the people hit by cars didn't see them coming. Based on the simple predicate that if they had seen them coming, they'd have got out of the way. I'm also going to assume the incidence of people who are involved in RTA's because they've had both feet superglued to the road like Wile E. Coyote is actually very, very small.

Given all of that, exactly what advantage do these ruining lights give? 'Oh, that large heavy metal object coming towards me at speed might be a car but I'm not sure because it doesn't have a couple of low intensity lights on it which would make it's nature obvious. I think I'll stay here in the road until it get a lot closer so I can be sure'. Really? If it's daylight, you can see it's a car. if it dark, it should have it's headlights on. There's no logical state where DRLs make a sod of difference.

This is the automotive equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. The DoT/EU equivalent may have statistics to back up their position but then I've seen the DoT use statistics for all sorts of things, quite a few of which have turned out to later be bollocks. And as a trained statistician I know exactly how much of 'statistics' is subjective analysis of ambiguous results.

It's pointless, it looks stupid and it's one more thing on a car that may go wrong (and would I presume be an MOT failure should it do so). Marvellous.

I think you're wrong.

When the sun's low in the sky, and perhaps the roads are wet - so really any given commute in the UK - if you're driving into the direction of the sun, with the added road glare, it becomes hard to judge the distance or position of the oncoming silhouettes. Sorry, cars.
With DRLs on, you get a much, much better idea of where things are and how fast things are moving as they come towards you.
Likewise for the vehicle behind you - putting the lights on give them a warning of how far in front you are, and a better indication of distance.

Seeing as my car is apparently invisible to some drivers, being black and low, I'll take every piece of help I can get in order to improve my visibility.

More importantly, especially given that there is "recent research on DRL" touted contrary to your belief, what exactly is the disadvantage? "They look silly" really isn't much of an argument, and in time you'll get used to them.

Not entirely random aside, I pulled out in front of car the other day that was rather closer than I might have intended. Why? Because it was the exact shade of green as the hedgerows and was perfectly camouflaged! I know that in France car insurance is cheaper if you have a red car for exactly this reason - you see red cars sooner than you see green ones. Running lights would probably have let me see the car sooner.

Likewise, compare HV accessories on bikes. People wear them in the daytime, not because they look cool but to increase visibility. You should be able to see a bike in daylight...

When I used to drive a 1.0l Austin Metro, which was black, I routinely had people pull out of side roads in front of me, even though it was broad daylight and I was driving at the national speed limit for that road.

"Oh, it's only a Metro. I can beat that."

When I began to drive with dipped headlights on, they gave me the benefit of the doubt and waited until I was past them before pulling out. It was a habit I carried over to my next car, even though it was much larger than the Metro.

When I changed to the Vauxhall Carlton sized cars, people tended to notice it anyway, so I lost the habit.

So, I think having running lights in daylight is a generally good thing. Ask any motorcyclist.

Try driving a Skoda Estelle. Even the Metro drivers treat you like scum.

I think that's the main reason motorcyclists don't like them. If everyone has their lights off during the daytime except motorcyclists, you spot them very quickly. If everyone has their lights on, suddenly they become invisible again.

Personally, although I rely on the auto lights, there are times when I override them - if it's overcast, raining or nearing dusk, I stick them on. If it's a country lane that I'm <ahem> cruising down, I stick them on. The rest of the time, it's not much of an issue.

Fair enough.


As someone who commutes east in the morning and west in the evening, I can't say my experience matches your theory. I don't remember finding it any harder judge distance in any such conditions where DRLs would matter - it's only a problem when pretty much everything is blown out by the sun, in which case you should lower your sun visor not rely on everyone else to light their cars up (for debatable gain anyway). I've been in the RTA mentioned above and two car-to-car accidents and the direction and intensity of sunlight was a factor in none of them. It is my position that the vast majority of road accidents are caused by one factor - driver error. I don't really see how DRLs are going to mitigate that to any great degree.

There is one use case where I think it would make a difference. I have had an experience where I was driving along a road which 'undercut' a motorway, so there was effectively a small tunnel. In bright sunlight from a high angle, the 'inside' of the tunnel looked literally pitch black. Luckily, the road was two lane but should a vehicle swerve inside that tunnel (for whatever reason), an oncoming car is just going to plow right into it because there was simply no illumination at all inside the tunnel. DRLs in that specific case would at least tell the oncoming driver that something was in the tunnel, in the wrong place and he/she should brake HARD. But that seems to me to be a very specific case to impose an extra regulation on every single new car within the whole EU.


Well in that case paint it fluorescent yellow. That makes more sense than DRLs. My car is also black and indeed very low profile and I don't believe having low intensity lights on it is going to increase my chances of survival on the roads by any degree at all.