Episode 20 - Feb 16, 2016

Moving videos from YouTube.

** Objects are closer than they appear due to the wide angle lens **

Driving with Parking Lights Info:

http://www.texashighwayman.com/laws.shtml

Driving with parking lights only

§547.302 - DUTY TO DISPLAY LIGHTS
(a) A vehicle shall display each lighted lamp and illuminating device required by this chapter to be on the vehicle:
(1) at nighttime; and
(2) when light is insufficient or atmospheric conditions are unfavorable so that a person or vehicle on the highway is not clearly discernible at a distance of 1,000 feet ahead.

I get rather annoyed when I see people driving around in the dark or in bad weather with just their parking lights on. There's a reason they're called parking lights. First, let's talk about the law in this situation. The law requires you to use all your lights (including headlights) at nighttime, which is defined as being one half hour after sunset to one half hour before sunrise, as well as anytime when you cannot see clearly for 1,000 feet, which essentially covers all inclement weather as well as dusk and dawn. Therefore, you should never be driving with just your parking lights on. If you're in a situation where you need to have any lights on at all, then you must use your headlights.

Some people will say that they don't want to use their headlights during bad weather or at dusk because there's enough ambient light for them to see and their headlights won't be illuminating anything. However, headlights are not only for lighting-up the road ahead, but they also make you more visible to other drivers. This is why motorcycles and emergency vehicles always use their headlights and is also the rationale behind daytime running lamps (see below for more discussion on DRLs.) So whenever visibility is reduced, you should use your headlights, if not to help you see but to help others see you.

Additional information
Note that parking lights are not the same as Daytime Running Lamps. Parking lights are when you can activate the front and rear marker lights without turning-on the headlights (see the photo below for an example.) These are meant to make your vehicle more visible while it is parked on the side of a dark road, thus the term "parking lights". However, parking lights are somewhat obsolete nowadays and most (if not all) recent model vehicles in the United States are no longer equipped with them. For vehicles that have parking lights, there is typically an third setting or position on the headlight switch-- position 0 is off, position 1 is the parking lights, and position 2 is the headlights. Daytime running lamps are essentially the opposite of parking lights-- they're the headlights illuminated with the front and rear marker lights off (although some vehicles now have a separate set of lamps for the DRLs) and are generally automatically controlled. Wikipedia has a good write-up on the differences.

https://driversed.com/driving-information/the-vehicle/lights.aspx

Parking lights are located at the front and back of your vehicles; they are white or amber in the front and red on the back. All of them must be visible for 500 ft. It is never legal to drive with your parking lights on; they are only to be used during parking.

Intro and Outro music from http://www.orangefreesounds.com/ and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/