Lost - Eight lumps of tarmac!

Mon 29 Jan 2007, 00:40

Geoff, either you're being nittish or I nitwittedly glitched syntax & didn't properly write what I meant! Perhaps I confused fullbeam and mainbeam words? NO, I'm not a moron driving around on high/full/undipped main lights all the time, methinks people are being deliberately silly hereabouts in such mis-interpretation, perchance???

I said - I hope I said! - that I now have adopted running on mainbeams (DIPPED!!!) in daylight as this is statistically proven as being miles safer in all terms of accident reduction, with cars AND WITH PEDESETRIANS IN ALL AREAS and daylight animal collisions. Which is why it is compulsory at all times in Scandinavia and other European countries (having a 1000kg Elk through the windscreen concentrates minds on accident avoidance with foot travellers. A local Roe deer is, comparatively, a dwarf bunny...and Charlbury has its share of 9-15 yr old homo sapiens sapiens - wow what a contradiction in terms of a species name, eh??? - running around the place. Which IIRC is the highest statistical risk age group for pedestrian/vehicle "interactions". I would welcome a "Twenty's Plenty" campaign around here, and am often incensced by the speed of many drivers going past the Co-op for example, an area of very high "probability of pedestrian/vehicle interaction at high consequence level velocities" as I sort of recall a council report elsewhere putting it once, i.e. dead kids. 20 mph - probably alive. 25 mph - probably dead. Yes, for my sins, a long long time ago I was once on a major city Planning Committee for some time and got to know more about traffic issues than I would ever have cared to otherwise...).

I'd support the UK adopting similar lighting legislation to e.g. Scandinavia, knowing what I do, and how trivial it would be for people to "implement" the practice. Like observing speed limits - preferably lower ones.

Further to the statistics on using main lights (40 or more years) is my subjective/observed experience of the nits nowadays haring around narrow bendy rural roads. At speeds well in excess of both their raw reaction abilities and driving capabilities. With their vision focussed closely ahead of their position so as to negotiate the variable curves (again empirical research in tracking driver eye movement has shown where people look when driving beyond critical speed levels on bends etc.). Modern forgiving suspensions, brakes and tyre grip allows people to regularly exceed those thresholds, which 1970s and even many 80s designs - much less pre-70's - constrained or didn't allow such speeds to be achieved by ordinary mortals in ordinary vehicles.

Anyway, that these wannabee protoracers wake up much much sooner to the prescence of oncoming traffic when that traffic is on mainbeam is quite evident.

Perhaps I used the term fullbeam which could be the source of the misunderstanding, i.e. the high and long focussed light beam, and not mainbeam, i.e the high wattage bright light which is not the pilot or parking light, dipped, low or high or full. I still interchangeably use British and 1960s Canadian parlance (being on highs and lows, full beam, dipped lights etc.) so perhaps thats where confusion set in.

I do try to remember to dip mainbeams at night for oncoming traffic, yes really I do! And probably forget as often as most people to do so when mooching homewards or whatever.

One must try to remember to dip lights at night with oncoming traffic, or pity the poor bedazzled flasher (err...) coming the other way ... We certainly seem to be on the receiving end of people who refuse to/can't manage to dip even when "reminded" (yes, itself a bad habit that compounds the situation but we all do it) a lot more often around here nowadays than compared to my memories of rural driving in the 70s when I wur a country lad.

As one gets older and the cornea and lens becomes more opaque one is much more prone to "sheet glare". "Older" here means much over 35, incidentally. The deterioration in low light vision with age is quicker and greater than people realise. Quite frightening (says he remembering an early incarnation as a neurobiologist, and its disturbing revelations as well as constant experiences of being an experimental victim to someone or other in the MRC labs which gave one a worrisome awareness of ones own frailties to say the least...).

Usually - oh yup, again - most failed dippers (so to speak) seem to be speedsters half way over the white line who clearly cannot process the information fast enough with their limited grey matter to operate the "oncoming car, on full mainbeams, must dip light, move hand/foot to dip light switch, move car over to left" neuromuscular circuit in adequate time.

Or perhaps they simply don't care, seeing as its the OTHER person who's going to end up in a hedge, ditch or wrapped around one of the standing trees in the hedgeline, or hitting the car following the speedster after having been blinded off the road or across the road - with the offender long gone past.

After all, one has to SLOW down if one dips the lights and can't see ahead properly, yes? Can't have such an infringement on personal liberty can we now?

I gather the car which rolled on a bend outside Chippy a couple of months ago was through dazzlement by a "rally driver" coming the other way...