Driving incognito?
What is
it about people who drive dark-coloured cars and a resistance to using their
lights?
If you don’t believe me, make a mental check next time you are driving home in less-than-ideal sunny conditions. I’m obviously generalising (there are many drivers of dark cars who do indeed use their lights appropriately) but just one cloud in the sky and a noticable majority of people with white, yellow, red and other conspicuous-coloured cars have their lights on in a flash. But unless the dark blue and black cars nearly collide with something, they don’t even start to turn on their “parking lights”.
Is it a sense of economy in light bulbs? At €5 a throw once every two years, if they are going to mean the difference between a truck driver seeing me or not on a rainy night, it’s a small investment. Or are they trying to “save electricity”? Now the engine, which is turning anyway, turns the alternator which charges your battery… ah forget it!
Ok, a lot of the mid-career drivers on the road today (which excludes the terrified pizza-faced learners who stick their chins out, and the little old ladies with knitting needles through their buns) are products of the Knight Rider era. For any reader who happens to be in the bracketed category above, that was a TV series which saw David Hasselhoff (aeons before his Baywatch days) saving humanity between driving (to the off-licence, or so it now seems) a pimped black Trans-Am with an on-board computer (about as advanced as an entry-level Hyundai today) and the slightly camp voice of a Cambridge butler with haemorrhoids.
Indeed, ‘60s and ‘70s movie iconography abounds with darkened black cars slipping silently through darkened streets. But SH*T! Don’t these idiots realise that just like there always a free parking bays on a movie set, there’s never any (unexpected) oncoming traffic either?
Maybe it’s a need akin to the “ostrich mentality” that spawned the modern adolescent penchant for wearing hoods with everything, even in mid-summer. Sort of: “Duh, maybe if I can’t see the world (or any oncoming traffic), we can all pretend I don’t exist”.
Well you DO exist, and moving at even 30km/h through a residential neighbourhood, you are potentially a lethal weapon! 10/10 for those countries who have made “lights on at all times” the law. Want to know the benefits? Ask a biker.
If you don’t believe me, make a mental check next time you are driving home in less-than-ideal sunny conditions. I’m obviously generalising (there are many drivers of dark cars who do indeed use their lights appropriately) but just one cloud in the sky and a noticable majority of people with white, yellow, red and other conspicuous-coloured cars have their lights on in a flash. But unless the dark blue and black cars nearly collide with something, they don’t even start to turn on their “parking lights”.
Is it a sense of economy in light bulbs? At €5 a throw once every two years, if they are going to mean the difference between a truck driver seeing me or not on a rainy night, it’s a small investment. Or are they trying to “save electricity”? Now the engine, which is turning anyway, turns the alternator which charges your battery… ah forget it!
Ok, a lot of the mid-career drivers on the road today (which excludes the terrified pizza-faced learners who stick their chins out, and the little old ladies with knitting needles through their buns) are products of the Knight Rider era. For any reader who happens to be in the bracketed category above, that was a TV series which saw David Hasselhoff (aeons before his Baywatch days) saving humanity between driving (to the off-licence, or so it now seems) a pimped black Trans-Am with an on-board computer (about as advanced as an entry-level Hyundai today) and the slightly camp voice of a Cambridge butler with haemorrhoids.
Indeed, ‘60s and ‘70s movie iconography abounds with darkened black cars slipping silently through darkened streets. But SH*T! Don’t these idiots realise that just like there always a free parking bays on a movie set, there’s never any (unexpected) oncoming traffic either?
Maybe it’s a need akin to the “ostrich mentality” that spawned the modern adolescent penchant for wearing hoods with everything, even in mid-summer. Sort of: “Duh, maybe if I can’t see the world (or any oncoming traffic), we can all pretend I don’t exist”.
Well you DO exist, and moving at even 30km/h through a residential neighbourhood, you are potentially a lethal weapon! 10/10 for those countries who have made “lights on at all times” the law. Want to know the benefits? Ask a biker.
Be BRIGHT! Use LIGHT! – AMB
