Or, in other words, if your car has DRLs in the US, you are burning fuel, consuming bulb life, and emitting light pollution for no statistical improvement in safety at best - i.e., no good reason. The only vehicles that benefit from mounting and running DRLs are trucks, vans and (unmentioned by the WP excerpt) motorcycles. Motorcycles see a 23% reduction in head-on crashes when they're running DRLs, by the same study.
Burning fuel? Get LEDs.
Bulb life? See above.
Light pollution during the daytime? Right.
Concerning the statistical safety improvement, read your quote again. It says accidents involving vans and trucks are reduced when DRLs are involved. It doesn't say that the DRLs are mounted on the vans and trucks, hence it's entirely possible that using DRLs on your car reduces your risk of getting involved in an accident with a van or truck.
I agree. The only reason for leaving the rear lights off is, like I already said, to make braking lights pop-up more on the Autobahn. Since we (Finland + Scandinavia </narf>
) don't have free speeds there is no reason leaving the rear lights off.
Don't you guys have third brake lights?
Spectre: You do realize modern LED DRLs energy consumption is close to zero? It's true that traditional halogen lamps (2x 50W in front) consume quite a lot of energy and if I remember correctly 100W electrical consumption is about 0,1l/100km increased fuel consumption. But how much do those modern DRL LEDs use?
You wouldn't use 2x55W halogen as DRLs though, for example my halogen DRLs are 2x21W I believe.
Concerning fuel, you should get roughly 1-2kWh of electricity out of a litre of petrol. Using my DRLs as an example that's enough to run them for 48 to 96 hours. At an average speed of 40km/h (based on figures from my on board computer for the last few fillups of commuting) you're looking at an additional litre of fuel every 1920 to 3840 kilometres, that'd be 0.025 to 0.05l/100km or an additional 0.18 to 0.36%.
Based on 2x5W for LED DRLs you'd have to divide these figures by four, for more highway driving the figures would go down as well.
Except in these latitudes, it can make the car invisible. Remember that the supermajority of the continental US is below the latitude (I.E., south) of Madrid, Spain.
If I interpret the video correctly your point is that using any kind of forward illumination makes you invisible to people looking into a low setting/rising sun?
If that's the case then this problem should be
much greater in higher latitudes such as Scandinavia due to longer durations of such low-sun scenarios. The closer you get to the equator the shorter the rising/setting period gets. Close to the poles you can have weeks of 24/7 low-sun driving. I wonder how they survive...
Then you'd want fog lights, not high-beam based DRLs (the most common type) bouncing quite a lot of light output back into your face.
Must be your weird DRL placement then, mine are integrated as a second lower-power bulb in the fog light housing with their own little reflectors.
A = DRL bulb
B = front fog light bulb
Do we honestly need automatic headlights?
I don't, my car's Danish. Unlike German cars it does not keep the markers on when you remove the key with the switch turned to low beams, so it just stays there for the winter.
. My God those turbo Saabs have a savage kick when you put your foot down!
here you can see the little 2 in the top right corner for the long-term trip storage, 1 for short-term auto-reset-after-two-hours:
