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Should all vehicles be fitted with day lights?
An unofficial "survey" of the private opinions of Australia's government road safety officers suggests most believe the States would probably support an initiative to have all new vehicles sold in the country fitted with day-time running lights (DRL).
The survey is contained in a report of a literature review for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on the effectiveness of DRLs in helping cut the road toll.
The review found that although there is a substantial international body of evidence to show that such lights do reduce daytime crashes, there is a considerable variation in reported results.
For example, a Canadian study showed a 5.3% overall reduction in crash rates principally involving vehicles travelling in opposite directions. Another study by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed a 7% reduction in multiple-party daytime crashes.
The only research quoted from Australia involved a study conducted in Western Australia on a fleet of 80 vehicles fitted with DRLs and a matched fleet without the lights. The results, taken over a ten-month period, were based on a time-to-crash analysis.
This found that DRL-fitted vehicles took more than five times longer than non-lit vehicles to be involved in a vehicle-on-vehicle daytime crash. Authors of the safety bureau report says they would like to see more Australian research - primarily to help decide whether Australia needs to have DRLs on all the time, or just to switch on automatically when ambient lighting levels are low. Whichever option is chosen would determine how much extra fuel would be needed.
However, since publication of the report, car-maker Audi has started marketing what it claims is the world's first car (the 12-cylinder Audi A8 6.0) to be fitted with DRLs made from light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. According to Audi, these LEDs have "virtually no effect on fuel consumption".
Meanwhile a CNN news report has uncovered a cost saving for DRL users - and perhaps an extra encouragement for owners of older vehicles to have the lights fitted. CNN has told US motorists that some American vehicle insurers are now offering insurance discounts for cars with DRLs.
