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DAY TIME RUNNING LIGHTS - BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
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What MAG Said a Long Time Back |
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Not just a song - but a way of life.
Daytime Running Lights (DRL) are back on the agenda as reported in last months Network regarding the European Commissions consultation on DRL.
If the EU Commission gets it's way it will be mandatory for all vehicles to have to have their lights on during the day.
MAGs National Research Officer, Elaine Hardy has replied to the consultation and has evidence that DRL doesn't make any difference, in fact in some countries it makes matters worse.
For example in 2001, Denmark presented a document to the United Nations in which they stated that there had been an increase in pedestrian and motorcycle fatalities which in their opinion was directly linked to DRL.
However, the EU Commission's consultation paper cites Dutch and Norwegian Safety 'experts' who have estimated that DRL might save between 1,200 and 2,000 lives a year in Europe but at an estimated environmental cost of one to two percent increase in fuel consumption.
The mountain of safety research papers and studies seems to focus mainly on 'gadgetry' as a panacea for casualty reduction throughout Europe.
A myriad of technological solutions has been proposed, which includes DRL. However, the DRL debate appears to be the result of compromise between the European Commission and the automotive industry rather than a considered long term solution to the problem of road accidents.
Using a lot of jiggery pokery, the safety 'experts' have come up with arguments in favour of DRL that will let the car industry off the hook.
In July 2001, the European Commission informed the Council and the European Parliament that ‘ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, had offered to accept a voluntary agreement in order to prevent the far progressed project of a directive on an improved pedestrian protection by imposing strict requirements for the design of the front parts of motor vehicles (soft car fronts).
Part of this voluntary agreement was a paragraph containing the offer to immediately equip new vehicles with daytime running lights.
‘These lights should be in compliance with the requirements of the ECE Regulation No. 87 and should be activated automatically.
Thus, the discussion on daytime running lights had new dynamics’.
In spite of this agreement between the EU Commission and ACEA, trials for soft fronts have gone ahead with extremely positive results. The Endura Frontal Protection System (FPS) has now been tested on the Toyota RAV 4.
The Toyota RAV 4 is the first of many diverse vehicles which will be tested. These tests were carried out in Great Britain at the testing centre, MIRA.
The results demonstrate a significant improvement in the risk of pedestrian injury to head (95- 98%), pelvis/abdomen (59-79%) and leg (37-40%)23.
For ACEA DRL is a better option - which of course, will save the car industry the financial burden of having to mandatory re-design the front of cars to soften the impact when hitting pedestrians, which is what the EU Commission had originally wanted.
Releasing the automotive industry from the financial burden of redesigning the front of cars creates other implications.
The most obvious and most worrying, is that of displacing the responsibility from car drivers to look out for other road users onto other road users to become responsible to look out for cars. This may affect insurance claims - whereby the insurer may not pay out damages to other road users - with the
caveat that they should have 'seen' the lights of the vehicle.
It may also have a 'moral hazard' effect, which is that car drivers feel less inclined to take due care when driving.
Cars are the major cause of deaths on European roads, therefore the focus of EU Commission safety reduction strategies must first and foremost consider better road awareness through changing the attitude and behaviour of car drivers as well as motorcyclists, rather than opting for DRL as a compromise.
This has not been addressed in the Third European Driving Licence Directive.
In fact, there is not one sentence in the Directive that recognises the human behaviour (of car drivers) as the greatest cause of fatalities in Europe.
There has been no requirement whatsoever to change the behaviour of car drivers through improved testing and training by focussing specifically on road awareness for vulnerable road users.
Instead, the EU Commission has preferred to impose further training on motorcyclists while completely ignoring the one most significant cause of motorcyclist fatalities.
DRL for motorcyclists is by and large mandatory throughout Europe, either explicitly through legislation or implicitly due to the hard wiring (AHO – Automatic Headlights On) by manufacturers.
Yet in spite of this, of the motorcyclists killed annually in Europe, 40% of these deaths is due to collisions with cars.
MAG UK demands that both the theoretical and practical hazard perception test must be overhauled to take into consideration the causes of collision accidents and thus, must identify motorcycle awareness as a fundamental part of the testing regime of car drivers, in order to reduce the potential for collisions between cars and motorcycles.
Finally MAG UK believes that the automotive and motorcycle industries, car and motorcycle publications and dedicated television programmes, are indirectly responsible for many road accidents.
In our view, they need to re-evaluate their marketing strategies especially those that focus advertising on young car drivers and motorcyclists by promoting the glamour of speed and dangerous behaviour.
The consultation response can be downloaded at Here
MEP Lobby to Follow
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