I think that's what he meant :)

Actually, in Canada, it's pretty easy: all vehicles made in 1990 or later are supposed to have them. A 1989 car doesn't require them; a 1991 car does. A quick glance at the registration is all that should be necessary, or failing that, at the manufacture date on the driver's door sticker.

"They look ugly."
"They use more gas."
Ummm... there are lots of others that have been brought up here from time to time, but those are the two biggest ones.

^ then there's the crowd who install HIDs :). If i were them, I'd spend time rewiring it. :)

DRL's for my car are a bad thing, since i have 4 seperate lights for highs and lows. The highs are used as my DRL's stock.

This means my high's are going to burn out a hella lot fast if they turn on EVERYDAY. I know when it's too dark to see, and i'm responsible enough to turn on my lights when it starts to get dim, or when it's raining.

DRL's are just for noobs, like 99% of people who don't bother turning on their lights. Then again 99% of noobs don't turn on their lights because they assume the DRLs ARE their lights.

Faster than if they were combined high/lows? Faster than if they used the lows instead of the highs?

Another pointless argument against.

DRLs aren't there to "make sure your lights are on when it gets dark" - their purpose is to improve visibility in ALL weather. Even under a blazing summer sun, you're more visible to oncoming traffic if you have your lights on. THAT is the purpose of DRLs.

^ why would we need it under a sunny day? Are people really that blind?

I dont see why anyone would complain about DRL
but i do find them to be a waste during a sunny day. Manufacturers should start making DRL have a light-sensitive toggles for new cars.

^ and when you drive down the road past trees, going in out in out in out of the shade at 60k? strobe effect haha.

DRL's are really helpful when it's still bright out, not so much at noon but when the sun starts to hit the 45 degree angle level, that several times I've caught myself and my friends about to make a pass, only to just barely glimpse the pre-1990 vehicle in the oncoming lane prior to starting the pass. Oddly though, I see a lot of never vehicles with no DRL's, mostly domestics and mostly Jeep Grand Cherokees (not sure why).


slightly more on topic, I know there's a guy in Europe who imported the badging from a Saturn Sky to put on his Opel version of the Sky, as they don't have Saturn over there.

You've probably never driven the Interior highways then. When the road gets fuzzy from the heat, you can see oncoming traffic 4-5 times sooner.

It's not that your car ISN'T visible without them... just that it's a LOT MORE visible with.

illegal, not worth the hassel IMO

DRL's run at um..what.. 10~15% of the bulbs power output?

hardly a factor of it burning out faster. Even if it did, the benefits of DRLs outweights the cons of it, if any.

it's not the power output, it's the consistent on/off (depending on your driving style that will eff the fillament and make it weak and eventually break).

Now, my car stock uses H1's, which everyone knows burns out faster than every other bulb cuz of it's size.

The original argument is that they use the highs, i don't want them to use either the highs or lows.

The thing is, you just have to believe me when I say I'm pretty responsible with my headlights. I even turn my headlights entering underground parking lots.

so, a seperate DRL system in place of current ones that utilizes the high/low beams of the vehicle is what you are after.

Caravans had that (last last generation) with their corner park lamps and they moved away from that to using the more mainstream high/low beams setup.

and nooooo I'm at attacking you on DRL or non DRL or turning headlights on when needed, I don't know you but I always give people the benefit of the doubt first :) so if you say you are responsible, I'll believe it *unless I catch you not doing that * :D

no more going off subject though lol :lol I realize this thread is about europlates not DRL's..

/derailment of thread.

You guys spout garbage like it's truth. Pull your heads out of your collective asses and get your facts straight.

DRL's use anywhere from 50-100% of the full rated voltage, depending on the car and how it's wired. There aren't any incandescent bulbs in use on cars out there that would light up at only 10-15% of their rated voltage.

There is little evidence out there that DRLs are safer. Both sides have made claims in their favour, but it's an argument that neither side will win. No one is willing to spend the amounts of money it would take to prove it either way. Some people like em, some people don't. Some people like hi-beam DRLs, some lo-beams, some marker lights. Me? I drive around with my marker lights on at all times, so I've disabled the hi-beam DRLs that came with the car.

I don't need a study to see a car with DRL coming at dusk or dawn, or in the fog. If you do, then please get some glasses.

You can't see a car coming without the DRL's on? You're the one who needs glasses.

I've been driving since before there were DRL's... we didn't need lights on to tell if a car was moving or not. Yes, it makes it easier... but that's not the issue.

To the OP: sorry for taking your thread even further off topic :)

And that's not a lot of on/off??

Bulb brightness isn't typically controlled by changing the voltage, it's controlled by changing the duty cycle of the power. Bulbs are dimmed by flicking the power on and off quickly - the shorter the "on" portion of the "flick", the dimmer the light.

How is it LESS safe for your car to be more visible?

This is the part I don't get... you might be able to argue HOW MUCH more visible you are WITH lights on, but nobody can claim you're LESS visible that way.

Actually, that's exactly the issue: not that nobody could see other cars before DLRs, but quite simply, that other cars on the road are MORE visible with their lights on, regardless of how bright it is outside.

I'm not saying anything about DRL's not being a good idea.. just that STATISTICALLY (which I can Google for you if you wish, since you seem unable to do so yourself) they don't actually make a lick of difference when it comes to car crashes.

If you can't see a big f'n truck coming at you, lights on or lights off, you're still going to get hit by it!

Duty cycle? WTF are you talking about? We're talking about incandescent light bulbs, not welders... cars don't have oscillating circuits in the headlight circuit. Seriously, where do you come up with this crap?

DRL's are usually (but not on all cars) the high beams connected in parallel = each bulb getting half the voltage drop so about 6.6 to 7.3 volts when the car is running. Don't try to make out that the DRL system is anything complicated - it's really quite simple.

Concerning the duty cycle comment, Soundy is actually correct... at least for some vehicles.

I'll have to take your word for it there Lomac... every vehicle I've ever worked on was a really simple circuit, usually with a relay to take the lights from series to parallel. It's cheap, easy, and works. Usually why automakers go with the simple stuff...

Sorry for ripping on you, Soundy. I'd love to see a schematic of how that's set up, if you have one.

I don't quite have a schematic per-say to show you, but I do have some electronic explanations on how it works.

Clicky - Hopefully that link works.

jlenko how can they have statistics against DRL's? if they see the car, they generally don't hit it, so there's no statistic. DRL's make the car easier to see in poor visibility situations, plain and simple.

Soundy speaks the truth, though I wouldn't be surprised if some older cars used relays. changing the duty cycle is just much more efficient. It doesn't oscillate in a sine wave, it just alternates between ON and OFF at a high frequency, creating a square wave. the amount of time spent on vs the amount of time spent off determines the duty cycle.

They don't.. you're not looking at this from the right point of view, you're obviously one of the pro-DRL folks that can't see it from the other side. Open your mind :)

They have statistics that show DRL's make bugger all of a difference in most driving conditions. Dawn and dusk is about all it helps in... and that's usually because of stupid drivers who can't remember to turn their lights on, or have turned them off too early. I see LOTS of those around Vancouver, and if it weren't for the DRL's, I likely wouldn't see them at all.

I'm not trying to sound anti-DRL's here... but you guys make it as if it's the best invention on a car ever... they simply aren't that effective.

Since this thread is way off topic... let's bastardize it more. How about ABS? That is a PROVEN method of improving safety... lots of studies have actually shown that. Now, how many anti-ABS people do we have here? WAY MORE than anti-DRL's.

I'm pretty neutral on DRL's, mine are my fog lights and when they burn out I don't particularly rush to replace them. Around Vancouver DRL's might not be as useful as some other places. It's not so much that people forget to turn their lights on, I think it's more that they don't realize that they need to turn them on quite a bit before it's completely dark out.

I know that while DRL's aren't the most amazing invention ever, if I wasn't in the car with one of my friends he most likely would have hit a large pickup headon in his MR2, as the truck didn't have DRL's and was barely visible. Hell, I know lots of people forget to turn their lights on fully at night because of their DRL's they don't notice that they didn't turn the switch to the last notch (on many occasions I've received rude gestures from people I was trying to inform had their lights off, though they're usually nicer once they realize what I'm trying to inform them of).

ABS I don't particularly like, for the most people I can see its usefulness however I don't think it needs to kick in just as easily when you're driving in a straight line as when you're turning the wheel. I've seen the new vids of ABS on bikes though, and that is gonna save quite a few people IMO.

But that's exactly the point: you're MORE LIKELY to see the oncoming vehicle if it has DRLs.

Exactly. A standard dimmer takes advantage of the relatively slow startup/shutdown time of incandescent bulbs. If you flip the light on at full voltage, and then off again before it achieves full brightness, then you've dimmed it. The shorter the period it's on, the dimmer it gets. How do you think slow-dimmer dome lights work? Lowering the voltage doesn't work - you end up with a really short range where the light dims dramatically, and then simply goes out.

I didn't say they did. Note my use of the word "typically".

Erm, they'd have to be connected in series for that to work... normally operation runs them in parallel.

30+ years' background in electronics. Something you obviously don't have if you can't even tell the difference between a parallel and a series circuit.

^ since we're already offtopic, what area do you work in?

Link worked for me - good description there.

I wish I could find a good diagram of just how the PWM duty cycle affects brightness, but nothing's coming up right away, and it's late... but there's some good discussion on the topic here: http://www.physicsforums.com/archive.../t-268283.html

There's also some useful info here: http://home.howstuffworks.com/dimmer-switch.htm - although it talks specifically about AC circuits, the concept is the same for DC.