Front Fogs

[Joglesby]

Tried the front fogs recently in bad visibilty - could hardly tell they were on!!!!!!!!!!!

:eerrrmm:

[gtb5]

Yes the fogs on our car are pretty invisible.

[Richard1200]

Fog lights are meant to illuminate the road surface immediately in front of the the car when it's foggy.

You will not see the benefit until it's foggy.

[Joglesby]

IT WAS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rmccardal]

Have NEVER thought fogs helped on any car. Mainly use them so others can see me!

[ColinBarber]

It has to be really really foggy for fog lights to help, normally to a point where turning off your main headlights actually helps in seeing because all you see otherwise is a solid wall of reflected light.

[Rabbers]

I live in the Po Valley, one of the foggiest parts of Europe. Between Autumn and

Spring, mornings not infrequently start with a visibility of 0 to 5m and stay that way

until afternoon. When I first had the 300h, I too was unimpressed with the front

fog-lights and therefore surprised when several people remarked on how highly

visible the car became with them switched on. So, one very foggy morning, I thought

I would stand outside my house and note the distances at which passing cars came

into view. Of thirty or so recognizably up-to-date ones that went by before I got bored,

the best scored about 30-33m (a VW Passat) and the worst 17-20m (a Renault Mégane).

Having earlier come in at about 25-28m, the 300h was slightly better than average and,

comfortingly, no worse than several Audis and BMW 3s and 5s. For what it is worth,

my somewhat unexciting conclusion was that the 300's fog-lights are no better or

worse than most, but could stand some improvement.

Generally, I think that the effectiveness of fog-lights in improving forward vision as

they are supposed to do largely depends on the nature of the fog itself. When you

are enveloped by a uniformly dense and bright white mass that hides probable sun-

shine and a clear sky above, they are not at all effective and may even create

additional glare. In these conditions, there is no way of judging whether the lights

are good or bad and their only virtue is to make you more visible to pedestrians and

other drivers. When, on the other hand, the fog is heavy and wet and/or freezing and

the street-lighting poor or non-existent, such illumination as the lights provide

depends purely on the strength of the beam, which should also be sufficient (and

in my experience never is) to penetrate layers of wet dirt. Last Winter, when the 300h

was new and the memory of my previous-generation 250 fresh enough to allow a

comparison, I formed the opinion that the 300h's fog-lights in the latter conditions

were better insofar as the road-surface immediately ahead was more intensely and

sharply lit up but that the length of the beam was shorter, possibly because of the

lights' angle and height off the ground. In short, I am not particularly enthusiastic

about their performance but, then again, my expectations, as in the case of any car

I have ever owned, were not high.

[PhilipK]

My understanding is that front fog lights are designed to only be of use in conditions of severely reduced visibility - when you are travelling at perhaps 10mph or slower. The offside front fog should be aimed more or less straight ahead, to illuminate any lane markings on the road, whereas the nearside front fog should be angled outward slightly, to illuminate the edge of the kerb.

This is very different to the rear fog light, which is designed to allow other drivers to see you more easily.

[Rabbers]

Philip, I think you are right on all counts.

Regrettably, many, or even most, motorists in my part of the world believe that front fogs used together with

dipped headlights enable pedestrians and oncoming cars to see them better in conditions of low visibility.

A good number of them, moreover, objectively support the practice despite their awareness that it is a

violation of the local highway code, which, following its revision not so long ago, clearly states that fogs

can substitute dipped headlights when visibility is low but must not be used together with them. Of course,

there is no formal requirement to have front fogs at all, or to use them if, as in the case of most cars, you do.

The only obligation, which I believe applies in most countries, is not to use them if visibility is adequate. The

presence of a rear fog, on the other hand, is obligatory on all cars (I believe there is European legislation in

this regard) and it should be turned on if visibility falls below 50m and immediately off when it improves to

above that. I believe that police also use 50m as a guideline to whether the use of front fogs is permissible.