Fog

[ladyofastolat]

This morning was foggy. This morning was so foggy that I could barely see next door. It was even more foggy up on the Downs road, where road signs were invisible, the car in front was a vague ghost, and side roads remained vague rumours until you were right on top of them.

Why, then, do so many people driving in these conditions fail to put their lights on? I can better understand those who charge along far too fast in the fog without their lights on; they are making no concession at all to the fog, so although stupid, are at least consistent. But the roads today were full of people limping gingerly along at half their normal speed, their barely-glimpsed ghost-like faces giving the impression of desperate peeriness, yet were still driving with no lights. Grr!

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Fair point. However, this morning's fog was the kind of fog where your own headlights made no difference at all to your utter inability to see anything, but other people's headlights made a huge difference to your ability to see them. Lightless people really were completely invisible until they were only a few yards away - kind of scary when they were charging along at 60 mph.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I am sure it's down to the whole 'don't use foglights unless visibility is below X' thing which you mention in your other comment. People can't remember exactly how far X was, but can remember that they were told that lights in fog are for Desperate Last Resorts only, so they don't use them.

I've never been able to work out why using foglights if it's insufficiently foggy is such a terrible thing to do. I used to be very wary of using them but when I lived in the boggy flats of Cheshire, we used to get such ridiculous quantities of fog that I decided I was just going to use them when I thought other people would be more visible if they were using theirs, which seems like a better common-sense measure to me. Nobody has ever told me off!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

A colleague was pulled over by the police and sternly told off for using unnecessary fog lights. Mind you, this was in twilight on a totally non-foggy day. It turned out that when he bought it, his car had come with its foglights set to permanently on, and he'd driven it like that for 3 years without realising. So, yeah, really this story doesn't so much prove that They do indeed tell you off for having unnecessary foglights, but that you can do it every day for 3 years without Them complaining at all.