Turned off by Daytime Running Lights - extract from New Scientist 08 August 2005

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30 June 2008

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By Caroline Williams

"WE GET it all the time," Roy Milnes tells me. "People laugh at us and say, 'You must have something better to do with your time.' What about you - do you think we're a bunch of cranks and weirdos?"

It wasn't an easy question to answer. Milnes is UK campaign coordinator for the Association of Drivers against Daytime Running Lights (DaDRL) based in northwest Wales, a pressure group with the sole purpose of fighting the use of headlights in the daytime. At first glance, I had to admit, it did seem a little over the top.

Cranks or not, there is no doubt that the anti-daytime lights lobby is gathering pace. The membership of DaDRL in the UK and the US is 3000 and rising. Their main complaint is that using lights in the daytime causes unnecessary and unacceptable dazzle to other drivers. Cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrian organisations are joining the fray, concerned about becoming vulnerable shadows in a sea of dazzling lights. And environmentalists point out that using lights in the daytime can only increase carbon emissions.

The issue is reaching boiling point because daytime running lights (DRLs) may soon become mandatory in Europe and the US in a bid to reduce accidents and save lives. Critics say it will in fact do quite the opposite, putting the most vulnerable road users at risk. So are daytime running lights an effective, common-sense safety measure or a blinding white elephant about to be let loose on our roads?

DRLs were first made compulsory in Finland in 1972, and have since become law in a handful of other countries, including Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. For much of the 1980s and 1990s imported Volvos and Saabs were all that most of the rest of the world saw of daytime running lights, but the trend has started to move south.

Now the laws in comparatively bright nations such as Italy and Israel require daytime running lights in certain weather conditions. Dipped lights are recommended in Sweden and Australia, and the French government advises drivers to use them on motorways. Even in Spain, Germany, Japan and the UK, where governments have so far held back on legislation, an increasing number of car manufacturers are offering DRLs as standard or as an optional extra on their flashier models.

A similar trend is developing in the US. To harmonise with Canadian regulations, and to create a single national law, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) legalised DRLs in 1993, prompting General Motors to start hard-wiring them into new cars in 1997. Lexus, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Suzuki and Subaru soon followed, with most other manufacturers offering them as an option. DRLs even bring insurance discounts, making them increasingly popular with drivers. DaDRL president Barry Bordonaro estimates that they are used by 30 to 50 per cent of American drivers.

For Bordonaro, who set up DaDRL in 1997 in response to General Motors' decision to include the lights as standard in its cars, this trend is not only irritating, but irresponsible and downright dangerous too. "I have heavily tinted glass placed in front of me to reduce the glare," he says. "I also no longer use rear-view or side-view mirrors."

While comments on the DaDRL website suggest that Bordonaro is far from alone, a 1998 study by psychologist Frank Schieber, at the University of South Dakota, concluded not only that the glare from dipped headlights was too weak to cause discomfort, but also that the US limit for bulb brightness could be safely increased from 1500 candelas to 3000 candelas. The UK limit for dipped headlights is a mere 800 candelas, and research commissioned by the Japanese government in 2003 recommends a limit of just 200 candelas to prevent glare and ensure that other road users can still be seen.

The question of safety is a contentious one. A study by Joseph Tessmer of NHTSA and a review financed by the European Commission, both published last year, concluded that DRLs reduce multiparty daytime crashes by 5 to 23 per cent, the largest reduction being for head-on crashes with motorcycles. That sounds convincing in view of the fact that when front seat belts were made compulsory in the UK in 1983, there was a drop in casualties of just 7 per cent. DaDRL members, however, are far from impressed.

In a scathing critique of the NHTSA study, former research officer for the British Motorcyclists Federation and self-proclaimed scientific voice of DaDRL, Stephen Prower, accuses Tessmer of using statistical jiggery-pokery. Although Tessmer's statistical test produced a 5 to 23 per cent reduction depending on the kind of accidents, when he applied a different test the results were quite the opposite - that DRLs increase accidents by up to 8 per cent.

Divided opinions

To Prower it is clear that the study is meaningless. But Tessmer, whose own car does not have DRLS, stands by his sums. "I'm not a proponent or an opponent. I looked at the data and the data seem to show a beneficial effect for daylight running lamps. If the test had shown that daylight lamps were dangerous that is what I would have shown."

Even if DRLs do reduce multi-car accidents as most of the findings suggest, many - including the British government - are concerned that not all road users will benefit. The official UK Department for Transport line on DRLs is: "Compulsory DRL use on all road vehicles would have an effect on the relative conspicuity of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. Motorcyclists currently make themselves more conspicuous in daytime by using dipped-beam headlamps, so if all vehicles were illuminated this advantage might reduce or disappear altogether."

Despite these concerns, the consensus among scientists is leaning towards the view that DRLs could indeed reduce accidents. "I think the evidence is pretty convincing that there is a [positive] effect," says Oliver Carsten, Professor of Transport Safety at the University of Leeds, UK. "It is small but significant." The European Union's commissioner for transport and tourism, Jacques Barrot, agrees. In a letter to DaDRL he wrote of the "convincing impact statement" provided by the latest research in favour of DRLs.

Back at DaDRL UK headquarters, with the realisation that DRLs will almost certainly become standard with or without a new law, the campaign team is considering a new approach. Perhaps it is no longer a case of "if" but "how" DRLs should be implemented. A semi-retired engineer who carries out energy surveys for the UK's Carbon Trust, Milnes claims that if every car in the UK used dipped headlights as daytime running lights, it would add an extra 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. And as countries such as China and India queue up to join the west in its gas-guzzling habits, matters can only get worse.

He suggests that instead of using the power-hungry 55-watt bulbs that are found in most headlights or the newer 13-watt dedicated DRLs, 2-watt LEDs could be added to every new car, and retrofitted to older cars to cut dazzle and put a far lower strain on the environment at a very low cost.

Some manufacturers, including Audi, have already introduced LED DRLs with negligible power consumption (see Graph). And Milnes's vision doesn't end there. If low power lighting, such as organic LEDs, were added to bumpers and other plastic panels, he says, there would be no excuse for not seeing an approaching car. "You could make parts of the car glow with the intensity of a computer screen and the power consumption would be tiny," says Milnes. "It may look a bit ghostly but it would certainly illuminate the vehicle, and dazzling other drivers would be a thing of the past."

Printed on Mon Aug 08 11:52:40 BST 2005