Why it’s important to manually turn your headlights on
With winter in full swing for many already, we thought it would be a good idea to provide a reminder on the importance of manually turning your lights on during any inclement weather situations, whether that is dense fog, smokey conditions, snow, rain, hail, or when it is sleeting, you should turn your headlights on manually. For many of these situations, remember, “if your windshield wipers are on, your headlights should manually be on, too.” You might be asking at this point, why does it have to be manual? My car has automated lights. While automated lights work in most situations, the automated lights have been known to not work during certain inclement weather situations during the day. We will touch on this more in the next section.
Most cars now have automatic headlights that use a photoelectric sensor to turn them on and off when a certain amount of darkness or lightness is met. While this is great in most situations, there are several instances where inclement weather was occurring during the day, but it was not dark enough to trigger the automated lights to turn on despite reduced visibility from the dense fog, snow, or rain. We at Limitless Production Group have also seen this in person while out in the field capturing brokering videos. The video above is an example of that. Some might be saying, “Well, who cares?” Long story short, no one can see you.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, over 38,700 accidents occur yearly due to reduced visibility from fog or heavy precipitation and wind-blown snow, dust, or smoke. These accidents have resulted in over 600 fatalities and more than 16,300 injuries annually. While speed is often a contributing factor in many accidents with people driving too fast for conditions, especially in pileups, several accidents begin when a vehicle merging or changing lanes isn’t seen.
The first image above is a prime example of what it looks like from a trucker’s point of view when there is a vehicle behind them with no lights on during inclement weather. The vehicle is almost invisible. The vehicles behind the vehicle with no headlines likely also can’t see it until they are on top of the vehicle since the taillights would also not be on. The following two images are screenshots from the video at the top of this article. In the first image, you will see a truck that likely does not have its headlights on as the taillights are not on. We are close enough to the truck to see it, if the truck drove a little further away, though, we might not see the white truck as it likely would disappear in the fog. Did you see the vehicle driving in the opposite direction? We circled it for you in the last image. This is a prime example of why manually turning your headlights on is so important.