The dangers of DRLs 4618

I need to cut down this juggernaut some, so I am only gonna comment on the most important points.

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:16:43 -0400, James C. Reeves

So far nothing but accusations and insults. Let's see...

Scientific referencing is a rather easy to understand process. You reference the exact document and the page, maybe the paragraph if necessary. Just naming a document that may or may not exist in reality has nothign to to with referencing. If you have data, referencing it is so ridicuouslsy simple that you should have no problem with it. If not ... well, we know why you don't reference anything. Accusations and insults again. Oh, and a false and insincere 'apology'. I didn't think you would stoop that low...

Please read the complete sentence before commenting. I listed all types of accidents listedinthisstudy.

If they had found significant data about DRL safety issues they would have listed it in the study.

I don't give you any credit. The only thing you have done well so far is insult me for not sharing your opinion and weasel out of referencing your supposed sources. I give credit where due, and in your case it is not.

As you are unable to list any documents that contradict the one I listed, apparently the discrepancies are not that big.

I am not inclined to doing research to support someone else's point. You challenged me to find data that supports my view. I did. I challenged you to post data that supports yours. You did not. So either put up or shut up.

You may have made some up or found the studies somewhere. Yet there is no indication that they contain anything that supports your point of view. You didn't even research far enough to find the document I referenced or you would have tried to spin control the situation.

Because you claimed they were there and if they existed and contained the data you attribute to them would be the only thing corroborating your theories.

Oh yes, there is a lot to gain there. I would be pleasantly surprised, if you could actually produce something that contradicts the study I found. Unfortunately I don't think you are able to produce anything. The reasons are quite clear.

I will take them for what they are worth, just as I take your uncorroborated wild theories for being worth zero.

The system shifts at the proper time, i.e. at the time during twilight when you normally would switch on your lights. If you want headlights in bright daylight, which seen over all drivers, locations and vehicles is a rather rare occurrence, you have to switch by hand.

lots of uninspired Reeves one-liners snipped.

James, please learn to understand at least the simplest sentences. What I said is that 95% of the 'headlights-off where they should be on' situations happen at night, not that 95% of people drive without light. That's something entirely different. If you are able to read simple english sentences beyond the fourth or fifsh word, you better start now. If not, please say so and we will stop this discussion.

GM hate rant disguised as 'Buick love' snipped

And the handful of DRL haters explains it? Amusing thought... But to be serious: GM isn't hurting even nearly as much as you would like to see them to because you lost a bundle on a car you were too lazy or stupid to research properly.

I personally like the styling very much. One of the few cars on the road that don't try to look as alike as possible.

Of course our James C Reeves knows exactly which light switch position most Chrysler 300 drivers use - not! You know what, James? So far your claims were easily explained as the rants of a hater, but you seem to have a superiority complex to eclipse even that hatred.

GM can't build enough Corvettes to satisfy demand. If a significant number of people wouldn't buy Corvettes because of DRLs the Corvette wouldn't outsell both the C5 and the DRL-less C4.

Probably because the newsgroup denizens are a dying breed. The younger crowd blogs and uses web message boards, because usenet and its denizens are about as inviting as the mouth of a shark with three rows of teeth on both jaws. Face it, people like stern, you, chemistyboy and others, who just are interested in finding someone to badmouth are not exactly the best athmosphere to make newbies want to stay.

Again you have a problem with reading. What I wrote was that your demancipation because of the car doing something by itself causes body parts to shrink.

No, I was able to do that despite your not providing any reference.

The option does exactly what it is supposed to do, give you a way of switching on the lights in situations that require headlights during bright lighting conditions. As the opposite does not happen (at least not in a traffic safety relevant context) an off position is not necessary and would destroy the beneficial effect the auto headlights have, because the bozos would switch the lights off and still forget to switch on the lights at night.

Bingo. Thus no off switch is necessary.

No, but I do camp quite a lot and have friends who camp too. None of them has a problem with a car going by with their lights on, especially considering that most drivers of non-auto headlight cars don't switch off their lights anyway.

I guess you can imagine how much I care about what someone who shoots pictures to help in a dirty divorce fight thinks.

If he doesnt like auto headlights, the modification takes half an hour of research and half an hour to implement. If he is too stupid to use it, he should not be a PI in the first place.

Of course you can turn the high beams off: Turn on the lights. Btw, did you know that flashing the lights is misinterpreted in almost all cases and discouraged? If you need to warn someone from impending danger, honk. That's what the horn is for.

You thought wrong, because you again were unable to read.

Apparently quite a few judging by the smell at the bottom of many grades.

What a nonsense. I saw the calculation a while ago and they postulated 100 Watts of electricity for every car plus umpteen 'losses'. In reality it will be a fraction of that and only a tiny fraction of the gas that is wasted by automatic transmissions and air conditions set too low.

patronizing rant snipped

several clueless one-liners snipped: Uh-huh!

All the accident types that showed significant change in the study.

People only complain if they don't like something. If you want to get a realistic number you need to take a few thousand random people and ask them whether they like DRLs or no DRLs. Unfortunately for you I am quite familiar with the tricks used to fudge numbers in statistics. Counting only people, who complain is one of the oldest and most transparent ones. If it were a few hundred thousand I would see a certain point, but the handful of people in the dockets simply has no significance whatsoever.

Frequently at your precise location means one, two daylight hours a day. In most other places it doesn't happen at all or only a few days a year. Not significant.

No, its usefulness shows itself off brilliantly. I never see GM cars with auto headlights driving around without light at night. OTOH I see quite a few non-auto-headlight cars that do. Only a total moron would build endlessly complicated sensors into a car to achieve a small gain over this.

IOW your body part does shrink when you have a machine do things for you. Beware of the DVD player and the microwave oven...

For me the system is as much of a nanny as my alarm clock or my cellphone, IOW not at all. Only people with a weak self image and nothing to say in life have a problem with a machine doing a menial job for them.

Why should I give all the bozos ten thousand opportunities to kill someone? I buttume you are familiar with the fact that only about one in 5000-10000 transgressions results in a ticket. Actually some transgressions are more likely to result in an accident than in a ticket.

tons of stupid Reeves one-liners snipped

I didn't mean them but you and your powers of observation.

Doesn't surprise me at all with your $6000 GM problem. A little hatred goes a long way...

Dark, i.e. after the end of evening civil twilight, as my pilot ground school so aptly phrased it.

That you did it purposefully indeed came to mind. And I don't believe you any more than the first time you stated this.

insults snipped

It also is larger by a rather large factor. The population density in the USA is highest in New York City, thus your buttertion that the most heavily populated area is covered by daily morning fog is simply wrong

I drove an older GM model with automatic headlights. The lights come on instantly when started under low-light conditions just like they do with mine and the current models. What you saw were either GM models without auto headlights or one of your frequent hallucinations.

The point is that the likelyhood of a car with auto headlights leaving a gas station at night without lights is just about zero. The only exception is a defective system.

See above. No, I mean fluorescent lights, which are prevalent in gas stations throughout the west.

And as you already stated there is no traffic safety related reason to have an off switch you conceded your other major point.

Jan-June 68 plus 107. In other words they sold all the GTOs they got. If you know of a hidden stash Id appreciate the info, some people I know are looking for one.

It is irrelevant from a safety perspective. If you are only 20 feet behind a car you should be easily able to see it even with its lights off.

And mine are. But I don't see it as a catastrophy if someone else's aren't.

No one stops you from switching on your lights in these cases.

I asked you twice already to describe the procedure. You can't, which shows that once again you only invented something to support your thesis.

All of sudden? Above you claimed that inducing a controlled skid with only regular brakes and FWD is possible.

If they had time to avoid the situation without ABS usually was not that close. Few people have the balls to get off the brake to steer around an obstacle in a non-ABS car.

I have ample experience with both non-ABS and ABS cars. I know in what situations ABS helps and in what situations it just does the same job an ordinary brake would do. You on the other hand are one of the oldtimers who think that just because they have little to no experience with ABS and because they have driven 'X miles without an accident' think it doesn't help.

In normal driving conditions ABS doesn't even regulate brake pressure. When it does (iow when you are in a situation that needs braking so hard that your wheels would skid without ABS) ABS keeps the car 1) controllable and 2) in a straight (or curved if the driver so desires) line if the road surface provides different friction values to different wheels. Chances are you never even got to test the difference between ABS and non-ABS in the short time you had your ABS equipped GM car. Which is a pity, because it would have enlightened you.

I had ABS kick in in quite a number of situations. Most of them I would have gotten through without ABS, at least with my life, in many probably without even an accident. But I had two situations, in which ABS with a very high probability saved my life. And I am sure that I am in a better position to determine that than you are.

Which is a pity because a lot of people run into things they would be able to safely stop in front of if they had mashed their brakes. The nonsense that oldtimer driving instructors taught in the 50s and 60s about gently braking shortening brake distances is just hogwash, as you would say.

If you want short brake distances 'proper brake control' is exactly what you don't want, neither in an ABS nor in a non-ABS car. You really must have learned driving in the dark ages where driving instructors only had their own experiences to draw from.

In a non-ABS car you admittedly have to give up quite some brake distance in order to maintain directional control in cases where you have to brake in a curve or on road surface with different friction coefficients left and right, but that has nothing to do with optimal braking but just with compensating for the serious disadvantages of non-ABS brake systems.

No, that's exactly the right training for emergency situations. Both in ABS and non-ABS cars.

I pity your kids. Learning how to drive from a dad who doesn't drive very well in the first place can be a truly bane experience. I am glad I actually had my mandatory driver training (25 hours) with a professional and very experienced driving instructor (I am German, remember?), who taught us the correct procedures (hit the brakes hard if you have an emergency stop to do, even pre-ABS) and told us all the anecdotes about the 'old methods'.

You indeed are a lucky family.

What you and your kids need is some driver training.

And how do you do it on your non-ABS FWD Chrysler?

That's not uncommon with acidic oldtimers like you. A 50 Watt soldering iron does the trick though.

Even many of the locals wrecked in the same place with trucks and trailers. The area is treacherous especially for people with little trailering experience.

How much experience do you have with a fullsize truck and a 20' enclosed trailer high-wind conditions on black ice?

Chris