Have you ever given any thought to how far you can see at night as you are driving along down the highway? High beam headlights seem to overpower the dark, but there are a lot of situations where we are limited to using just the low beams. I was required to calculate the safe speed using only low beam headlights at a seminar and I was surprised at the result.
Most drivers can see a dark object at night with low beam headlamps at a distance of 24 to 25 metres. The average perception/reaction time is about a second and a half. Using these facts, the result is a speed of 38 kilometres per hour. If you travel any faster, or don’t pay full attention, you will collide with the object before stopping.
Dark objects such as pedestrians and deer are commonly found on the roads we travel at night. Granted, there is other light to see by in town, but out of town approaching and passing other vehicles we are hurtling along at 80 and 90 or more, and using only the low beams. This seems to be a compelling reason to be a little more careful with our speed at night to me.
Now consider what could happen if one of your headlights were not working, or that both were so coated with dirt from winter driving that the full light output was not available. Complaints about vehicles with only one headlight are common and one only has to observe and count to see that this is true. For your own safety it is well worth the time and money to keep your headlights clean and in proper working order.
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“Are you allowed to drive with both headlights and driving lights on at the same time?” asks a reader. The question was prompted by this person’s complaint of being blinded by the lights of many of today’s vehicles. These vehicles display two headlights and two of what many people assume to be driving lights.
Driving lights are identified by the markings SAE-Y on North American lamps or the letters HR above the circle containing the E on European lamps. You are allowed to install two of them that display only white light. They must be mounted between 40 cm and 1.06 m from the ground level and aimed so that the high intensity portion of the beam is, at a distance of 8 m from the lamp, at least 12 cm below the height of the lamp and, at a distance of 25 m from the lamp, not higher than 1.06 m from the road surface. The lateral aim is +/- 150 mm at a distance of 7.62 m from the lamp.
In addition, these lamps must be wired so that they only come on when the high beam headlights are illuminated. This is usually accomplished through the use of a relay that is triggered when the headlights are switched to high beam. This would mean that a driver would shut off driving lights no closer than 150 m to another vehicle being approached or overtaken.
Driving lamp glare elimination is the ultimate responsibility of the driver of the vehicle using them. Keeping them clean and properly adjusted will solve many complaints and dimming them responsibly will solve most others. Enforcement is the responsibility of the police and the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles as the use of this type of lamp is not regulated by the federal government through Transport Canada.
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