Foglites Are Dangerous

[LILALLEYKATT]

I think that it should be against the law to be driving after dark with your foglites on if it is not foggy or raining out. These lites do not help enough to justify blinding your fellow drivers. It seems that drivers whom use them just want to show off the fact that thier vehicle is fully optioned and need it or not look at how much light MY VEHICLE can produce. It seems to me that over 50% of these offending vehicles do not care that thier foglites are not properly aimed. They actually hurt my eyes sometimes. I feel like this is counter productive to use a foglite that really does not increase your nite vision to the immediate front. I personally have to look away until the offending vehicle passes thusly diverting my attention from the road in front of me. Am I the only one whom this bothers to the ninth degree??/

[Raudermaster]

Correct me if I'm wrong fellow LEO's, but the only illegal foglights I heard of while you are driving, are the YELLOW one's that I only see on stock Lexus' I believe. Even HID foglights aren't looked at that much compared to those. And plus, as much as I love my foglights, and sometimes hate others, they do help for those little "last" minute avoidable potholes.

[DEFYANT]

Our foglights are ok. Aftermarket ones made for "Off Road Use Only" are illegal. Same with some of these bright HID bulbs some of us use.

Also, trucks that are lifted but do not have the headlight aim corrected are a PITA.

[Marauder386]

I have always thought of people who do this as screaming,"Look at me ! Look at me !". I get a chuckle when I see this in broad daylight and usually on some rice crunching POS with primered body panels on it...But yes, I agrre with the line of thought in this thread...

:cool:

[Raudermaster]

There's a Neon SXT (:hotrice: ) with like a 6" fart can, 3 different types of Foglights in whacky places, and like, 800000000k fake HID look alike blue headlights and it's ridiculously bright, and there's not need for it. I believe I'm going to do HID fog's to complete my front end come Spring time.

[LILALLEYKATT]

I hate the freakin ford explorers especially the 99-00 they are to brite. Plus if you turn your fogs on on most OEM vehicles they really do not do anything where you need it the most and thats way ahead of you. Sure they lite up the curb right next to you out the side glass but I do not consider that as aiding nite vision on a clear nite. Basically your just blinding everyone to varying degrees for no REAL gain IMHO. I see this becoming a bigger problem in the future as 95% of new vehicles seem to have overly bright fogs. I swear to god if I didnt have to worry about loosing my real estate license I would love to get out of my MM with a baseball bat and literally put thier lites out and peacefully leave. I hate the brite ones that much!!

[BruteForce]

I'm thinkin' that many of them may not be aware their fogs are blinding oncoming traffic. Mine were all off kilter until my buddy DirtyDog told me they were not aimed right after I followed him awhile. Dealer was happy to realign them for free (helped that I was having some big $$ work done at the same time :P )

[LILALLEYKATT]

I feel like sadly you are probally right they dont have a clue how bright they really are. Maybe if I added some 747 landing lites behind my grille .....????

[Carolina Rauder]

Instead of looking away try looking down at the line on the road......Rather than risking your life plus that Precious Marauder.....

[RCSignals]

Yes, most fog/rain/driving lights are often not aimed properly, and certainly shouldn't be aimed into oncoming traffic.

Usually they should fill in the dark area between the front of the vehicle and the point the headlight illumination starts to show on the road. And of course aid in lighting up the fog line/road side.

[Blue03]

I seldom use them but I did last night when I got caught up in the I-90 Snoqualmie Pass 5 hour closure. Boy the WSDOT sure blew it. They were caught off guard and unprepared. Hope they do better when winter really arrives.
I got trapped in the westbound traffic back up just west of Easton about 18 miles from the summit. Once they cleared all the wrecks, put down some de-icer and opened up the west bound lanes I turned the foggies on as I got near the summit. They really helped me see the road surface transition from wet to compact ice and back to wet on the other side of the summit.
I had to laugh at the pair of ricers that spun out before the summit. Apparently they were not paying attention. I wonder if they did it again on the downhill side. Glad I got by them before they got underway again.
It sure was a weird weather day. Earlier coming out of Walla Walla, I ran into blowing dust and strong side winds. Even had to slow down for visability at times and to maneuver around tumble weeds rolling across the road.
That was the worst weather abuse I've put on the MM since I bought it (Hey thats 3 years ago today!). Even so neither the traction control nor the anti-locks activated during the excursion and the MM handled all just fine on the stock BFG's. The nearly 6 cases of wine in the trunk probably helped some...Now on to the clean up... Cheers!

[Bradley G]

The purpose of fog lamps; They are to Be seen.
Not to see better.
They do their intended purpose.

[Agent M79]

Think what you will, but I burn my fogs whenever I am in the car. I use them as daytime running lamps.

I guess this is one of those things I will never know works or not. If it works, then I avoided the accident. If I avoid an accident how will I know it was destined to happen without the fogs/DRLs? Will a near miss be a near miss because the lights somehow made me more visible a split second before I normally would be?

Kinda like taking an aspirin for a headache... did the headache go away on it's own or did the aspirin really help?

[BAD MERC]

The only time foglights seem to bother me is when these "I am too cool to drive with headlights at night" buttholes use them as HEADLIGHTS in the middle of the night. I pulled smack-ass out in front of a Ram a few years ago, after seeing him coming. It looked like a different vehicle WAYYYYY down the road and next thing I hear is mud tires with the impending lockup sound. Use yellow foglights in the fog, you can use white driving lights with headlights anytime. Mine seem to give more light on the sides.

[GAMike]

The purpose of fog lamps; They are to Be seen.
Not to see better.
They do their intended purpose.

Partially true Bradley...... Someone else earlier was also correct when he said that the light is also there to fill in the darkness between your front end and the spots where headlights hit the road if properly aimed. Most people who buy these auxillary lights and install them on their car, have no idea the intended use, or that there are a few different types of lights to choose from.

Fogs don't by nature have along beam to them. They are supposed to flare to the side so you can see the edges of the roadway, but not shoot great distances.

I think the lights in question here are the high intensity driving lights that have very long & narrow projection. Almost laser like. These are driving lights and will be of little use in fog, though the people who use them think that they will help. These reflect off the fog and diminish the drivers road view area vs. enhance it. As a result they provide a false sense of security, and put the user at risk to himself and others.

When I rally raced we had headlights and 2 different aux. lights on the car....1 for for early am runs when it was foggy or raining, and one High intensity PIAA's for nite driving. Knowing what to use and how to use it is half the battle.
:drive:

Best regards, and Al.........Don't hurt nobody ok?:gangster:

[fastblackmerc]

Think what you will, but I burn my fogs whenever I am in the car. I use them as daytime running lamps.

I guess this is one of those things I will never know works or not. If it works, then I avoided the accident. If I avoid an accident how will I know it was destined to happen without the fogs/DRLs? Will a near miss be a near miss because the lights somehow made me more visible a split second before I normally would be?

Kinda like taking an aspirin for a headache... did the headache go away on it's own or did the aspirin really help?

+1................

[crouse]

Bradley you hit nail on the head.

The other thing I can't stand is when you come to a stop light and the vehicle behind me lines up slightly left thereby shining their left side headlight in my side mirror. I know most people don't do this on purpose, but I know there are some that do.


The purpose of fog lamps; They are to Be seen.
Not to see better.
They do their intended purpose.

[LILALLEYKATT]

Bradley you hit nail on the head.

The other thing I can't stand is when you come to a stop light and the vehicle behind me lines up slightly left thereby shining their left side headlight in my side mirror. I know most people don't do this on purpose, but I know there are some that do.
I am just trying to say that its the vehicles running around on a perfect visability nite with thier overly brite fogs on that are not contributing to the operators safety that really chaff me the wrong way. I will never run my fogs for daylite running. Matter of fact I had to pay extra to have the HIDs on my 05 V-8 Touareg disabled. Those lites were downright obnoxious but the real reason I dont like them is because I am a stealthy operator. I cannot have loud head lamps announcing my impending arrival to all of the state troopers if I want to keep my license. I am glad that we only have 330 State Troopers for the whole state and at any one time 2/3rds are not on duty. That makes 80-90mph a way of life around Bham. If I could cloak my MM I would...Usually someone with thier DRLs and foglites is pulled over keeping the local LEOs busy thats the only good thing about foglites when the weather is clear....

[Raudermaster]

I too burn my fog's with my headlights, I just like them. And, on a dusky evening, when it's not quite dark out yet, I will just use my fog's instead. Some foglight's help. I had the out of production Sylvania Xenarc X1010 HID kit on my Vic, and boy, talk about bright.....I think they were even brighter than my HID headlights. Sometimes I just drove home with those things on only after work. I believe people got pissed if I was behind them though....HID headlights, and HID foglights? I let my friend drive my car while I was in his truck, which is higher than my car, and I even got irritated with them lol.

[Marauderjack]

I also burn the fog lamps all the time.....I want to be seen by the morons on the road!!:rolleyes:

I highly doubt anyone will be blinded by our fog lamps......Some of the Euro cars and SUV's are another story!!:argue:

Marauderjack:cool4:

[Agent M79]

Well... the brighter the light, the easier it is to see my middle finger.

[Loco1234]

I want to get HID kit for both my Marauders hedlights and the Fog Lights..

I live up in the mountains and Need the light to see....

[LILALLEYKATT]

The MM lites are not to bad they are kind of on the dim side. I like to run mine as the sun is coming up or at dusk with the parking lites on. MMs fogs are a pull and play item which I like. I think they should outlaw the vehicles that the fogs stay on all of the time at the flick of a switch...

[Ezbok58a]

What you're describing isn't the lights fault, its the owners fault for not getting them aimed correctly.

I really wish they had the auto dim on the side mirrors so this way they dim the headlights brightness as well. (Like the interior mirror, that works perfectly, until the car changes lanes and sends it's kilted light into your side mirror and lights up your interior).

Um, Lights in general are supposed to stay on when you turn them on....

[jgc61sr2002]

The purpose of fog lamps; They are to Be seen.
Not to see better.
They do their intended purpose.

What Bradley said.^^^^^:D

[bigslim]

I didn't realize we had "fog lights". I thought we had "Driving Lights". Isn't there a difference between the two?

[DEFYANT]

Driving lights are your headlights. Real fog lights are yellow and work best down low to light the road under the fog.

Our fog lights are not very functional in that regard.

[Raudermaster]

So, I was right Charlie :D .