THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 20, 1994 TAG: 9408200022
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
In broad daylight, a driver can see an oncoming car with glowing headlights about twice as far as one with its lights off.
That was an eye-opening - you might say - piece of information when my wife and I heard and read the calculation at a refresher driving class for seniors conducted recently by E. Wallace Timmons of the Tidewater AAA.
The Triple A's manual, ``Safe Driving for Mature Operators,'' puts it this way:
``Turn your headlights on whenever you drive, day or night. Evidence shows that using your headlights reduces fatalities from frontal crashes and side collisions. . . . A vehicle with low-beam headlights on during daylight hours is visible at a distance of about 4,700 feet. Without headlights the same vehicle is visible at a distance of 2,200 to 2,500 feet.''
Of course, we hereabouts already have the requirement of lighting up whenever daytime weather reduces visibility. And another point to note is that our neighbors in Canada, by law, always drive with their lights on.
Our instructor reminded us, however, about forgetting to switch off when parking in daylight.
Well, the daylight/headlight policy seemed to make a lot of safety sense, so I decided to plug away at it and make this a habit.
As to the risk of not turning off the daytime headlights on reaching a destination, I was comforted by another precautionary habit I had developed earlier: A little routine of knob-turning and switch-flipping that I go through just before I leave the car parked somewhere. (And the backstop to this would be the little bell that ding-ding-dings when our car door opens and the lights have been left on.)
Well, the daytime-driving-with-lights was shaping nicely into an imbedded routine (and I was feeling good about helping other drivers see me those 2,500 feet sooner) when, about three days into the process, I went out to the car one morning and found the battery dead as a doornail.
Yep, the light switch was on: I had somehow failed to react to the ding-ding-ding thing when I got out of the car the afternoon before. Worse, my built-in system of turning all switches off at journey's end hadn't been so automatic after all.
Maybe my mental circuitry suffered an overload of precautionary habits. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
by CNB