Front fog lights

[jazzkat]

I hardly ever use the fog lights on my car front or back. It's rarely that foggy but you do see some peckers driving about with them on because they've seen a bit of mist or worse, rain.
I always get the impression it's because it was probably part of an option pack when they bought the car and think "I've paid for them I'm going to use them"

 

[Deleted member 1258]

My old KA doesn’t have any fog lights on the front, just one on the back, like others on here I don't get the fog lights on when there's no fog thing.

 

[Globalti]

Fog lights and sunroofs - complete waste of money. I usually get a stereo upgrade and the VW winter pack, which means heated seats. Mmmmm!

 

[Brandane]

Fog lights and sunroofs - complete waste of money. I usually get a stereo upgrade and the VW winter pack, which means heated seats. Mmmmm!

Fog lights are a waste of money, agreed. Even in fog they are useless! Sunroofs though? I don't have one on the current car and I miss having one. Apparently they have been replaced by air-con. For the few times that I really need to use air-con, it too is a waste of money and I would rather have a tilt/slide sunroof to let the fresh air in on dry days. To pre-empt the "don't you have windows that open?" brigade; a sunroof provides draught free ventilation and it is altogether much more pleasant driving with the sky overhead rather than a piece of tin.

As for your VW heated seats, I had that winter pack on a Golf SE many moons ago. The heated seats have the same effect on me as sitting on a cold stone wall. Piles of fun .

 

[Over The Hill]

I have to admit that I do occasionally use them when its not foggy because the dipped headlights on our Z4 are pathetic: they are properly adjusted, bulbs are good, but maybe because they are so low to the ground they don't really illuminate the sides of the road very well. So on winding country roads in the dark I tend to use them to give better visibility as there's usually quite a bit of traffic so full beams aren't an option. They do get turned off again once I'm back on a a road with street lights. I know it annoys some people, but as it isn't actually affecting them and it keeps me a bit safer then I don't see what the problem is.

Park your car about a car length from a wall or your garage door.
If you put on your dipped lights (as you should) you see it all lit up low down (where the road is) but quite dark on the higher bit (where the eyes of the driver coming towards you are) this does not dazzle the oncoming driver.
Now put on your fog lights and you will see that you are now lighting up the whole of the wall with much more in the higher bit where the oncoming driver is. It is not as much as full beam but nontheless it is still throwing much more light into the oncoming drivers eyes.

So please now ask yourself if you would like a driver in 2 tons of car coming towards you with good visibllity and able to see where they are going or blinded by some idiot with too many lights on so that they cannot see anything (while they can clearly see you and all your lights they are blinded to a) a cylist or pedestrian, b) hitting the kerb or something and beng thrown accross in your path.

So please only use fog lights in the fog only before you kill someone or yourself.
While you may better your own visibiltiy should not be at the cost of others visibility?
It is illeagal and rightly should be.
Clearly you are deluding yourself that it is not affecting others when clearly it is affecting them or they would not be annoyed with you and desperately trying to tell you that you are blinding them.
I really am amazed you passed your test. But perahps that was before you bought the BMW and adopted the standard attitued of such drivers.

 

[Archie_tect]

Th only time air conditioning was worth it's weight in gold was on a fractious return from Devon some 10 years ago, when the outside air temperature was 38 degC, goodness knows what the tarmac temperature was in the sun and we were stuck in solid traffic on the M5 with 3 elderly people in the back. It was odd to open the window and get a blast of superheated air coming in! We felt for people in the queue with no aircon.

 

[Reece]

To add, new cars (as of sometime last year) have to be fitted with day running lights and a few manufacturers use the usual foglight area to have these. I work for volvo who use this setup and caused lots of confusion with customers lol.

 

[Over The Hill]

They aren't necessarily fog lamps... since all manufacturers had to comply with changes requiring daytime driving lights every new car has to have some lights at the front. Mine has small driving lights which I can't turn off [unless I get into the car software set-up] where the fog lamps would be if I could have afforded a more expensive one with separate fog-lamps as an extra.

Driving lights are aimed low like dipped beams so dont dazzle or are just less intense. Fog lights are not dipped and light up everything with lots of quite high aimed lights that blind the oncoming driver.

 

[Archie_tect]

No, OTH, fog lights are set as low as possible to the ground so they cut under the driving snow or fog casting wider, flatter beams to the side of the road and the centre line. It's a total waste of time to have them pointing upwards- you must have driven in driving snow or fog and tried dipped beam and high beam and been blinded by the reflected flare.... proper foglamps aiming down onto the road surface let you see the road surface at slow speeds and certainly shouldn't blind either you or oncoming traffic.

As for some of the newer LED driving lights especially on Audis and Citroens, they really are bright and quite painful.

 

[oldfatfool]

Why? Please, anybody tell me why. It there are even cars driving on side lights and front fog lights. I just don't get it,

If it is particularly foggy then the amount of reflected light from std headlights can give less visibility than just sidelights alone, because (in general) fog lights are mounted much lower than headlights and angled different, it can therefore be very useful in certain conditions to drive with sidelights and fogs. Chavs with then on all the time need destroying though. (However a bank of 4 cibies on full wattage on a classic mini on an unlit country road is cool)

 

[Over The Hill]

To add, new cars (as of sometime last year) have to be fitted with day running lights and a few manufacturers use the usual foglight area to have these. I work for volvo who use this setup and caused lots of confusion with customers lol.

Back around 1978 Volvo 200 series were, I think, the first to have daylight running lights (then they were just switched on side lights then)
For fun we used to flash the drivers and watch them get really irate as they were often flashed trying to tell them they had left their lights on. Mostly they waved their arms about and you could see them shouting "I know!!".
Fairly quickly the drivers seemed to have the daylight lights disconnected as they all then seemed to not have them on after a while.

Then there was beeping at any car that was reversing and seeing them slam on their brakes and looking round for a car.

 

[Over The Hill]

No, OTH, fog lights are set as low as possible to the ground so they cut under the driving snow or fog casting wider, flatter beams to the side of the road and the centre line. It's a total waste of time to have them pointing upwards- you must have driven in driving snow or fog and tried dipped beam and high beam and been blinded by the reflected flare.... proper foglamps aiming down onto the road surface let you see the road surface at slow speeds and certainly shouldn't blind either you or oncoming traffic.

Try it on your car and you will see that fog lights certainly are not dipped in any way and thow light where an oncoming driver is. They are a very wide beam compared to a main beam on a car but nonetheless they dazzle oncoming cars which is why they are restricted to be used only when very foggy.
If you think about it a fog lamp is about one foot off the ground, if it pointed down as you say then you would not even be able to see the beam over the end of your bonnet. They point forward both up and down.

 

[Over The Hill]

If it is particularly foggy then the amount of reflected light from std headlights can give less visibility than just sidelights alone, because (in general) fog lights are mounted much lower than headlights and angled different, it can therefore be very useful in certain conditions to drive with sidelights and fogs. Chavs with then on all the time need destroying though. (However a bank of 4 cibies on full wattage on a classic mini on an unlit country road is cool)

Illegal too and car should not even be wired to allow this configuration. My car cannot even do this.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Illegal too and car should not even be wired to allow this configuration. My car cannot even do this.

Not according to Kitchin's Road Transport Law.

 

[Archie_tect]

we will have to agree to disagree about them pointing anywhere other than parallel to the ground- they're not supposed to light the way ahead very far just to the sides so you can see the road edge when you're driving slowly..... yours must be badly fitted OTH... upward pointing ones would light nothing but the air which is worse than useless and would cause disabling flare for the driver.

Only ever had them on one car... a Volvo -couldn't afford them on this one. They were fantastic in driving snow coming back from York and coastal fog... dipped beam/driving lights are always worse than useless and cause far too much flare to see. Why would anyone want to drive with fog lights on when it isn't foggy they don't do anything... at least we agree on that!