Just need to vent...

To be fair, I think I am in the same clan as your friend when it comes to the use of fog lights. My first ever car that had fog lights was probably a 2014 Pathfinder Platinum and then a 2021 Prius Prime Limited. In the US, fog lights are one of the features that separate the higher trim level from the rest. I don't think I had fog lights in any other cars prior to that. And I think my current 2022 Escape SEL also has fog lights. But, to be honest, I have not used them, and when I did try them on, I did not see any improvement in my driving condition.

Admittedly, I don't do much nighttime driving nowadays. And dense fog is not that common in our area. But my take on fog lights is that they are purely for cosmetic decoration for looks only in most cars. That was certainly the case for both Pathfinder and PP I had a chance to use fog lights on a few occasions. I have not had a chance to use it on our current car Escape, but I am not expecting the fog lights to improve the visibility of the road in a dense fog much. While I find foglights to be useless, newer LED headlights are certainly a vast improvement over older incandescent halogen headlights. I really miss the LED headlights I had in my previous Prius Prime. Our current car, Escape SEL trim did not come with LED headlights not even as an option unless I upgraded to the top-of-the-line Titanium trim. I will probably have to do the LED bulb replacement on this car similar to what I had to do on our older 2014 Pathfinder, even though I know it is not ideal and may be illegal.

 

Ahhhh..... Yes, you're right about front fog lights. But I mean the rear ones. It's not about seeing, but about being seen.

 

OK, that's a new thing I have never heard. Do we have a car with rear fog lights in the US? I certainly have never had a car that was equipped with one.

And being on the rear, must be to improve the visibility of the car you are driving to others behind you, not for improving the visibility in front of you?

 

My 02 Range Rover has manual headlights with an indicator on the dash when they are on. (Green headlight symbol)and another for high beams. (Blue headlight symbol). It also has front fog lights and REAR FOG lights which I use all the time. People in Colorado tailgated me all the time and I used all the lights in the rain or at night. During snowstorms they were very very helpful.

 

OK, I did a Google search. It seems rear fog lights are mandatory in Europe,. But in the US, dual rear fog lights are illegal. Rear fog lights are not required in US cars, and automakers do not put them. Only very few European cars (mostly German and Swedish) have a single rear fog light for the US model...

Rear Fog Lights - Truth and Fiction - Atlantic Motorcar

 

Couple comments.
1. Fog lights are seldom useful but there are times they help quite a bit. There has also been the rare circumstance that they have been helpful in the snow.

2. Drivers with headlights on during the day -- often times the driver has a turn signal on for a right or left turn, but because the headlight is on, the turn signal is washed out. Meaning I cannot see it. On my car, if I hit the turn signal the headlight is automatically turned off on that side, leaving just a running light and the turn signal.

3. Finally, I get used to various temps during various seasons. So, a car with a standard or narrow temperature range would be a nonstarter for me. In winter I seldom have the car above 61F, unless I have passengers.
Kris

 

Oh wow.

I had no idea that this was the case. It's always really weird when something is compulsory in one market and illegal in another. There are plenty that are optional in one market and illegal in another - bullbars spring to mind - but this is very strange.

Apparently some older Australian-made cars didn't have them - pre-2000 or so - but I think all new cars and all imported cars here (which is all cars since 2017 when our last factory closed) have them.

The only real problem I see with them - and this is more common in Britain, where people use them, than in Australia where they don't know they have them - is that people turn them on in fog, and then forget to turn them off, and they really are annoyingly bright in decent visibility. After your Googling, I did some of my own, and the suggestion seems to be that they're illegal because they could be mistaken for brake lights.

Every Northern winter, we see reports of massive pile-ups on freeways during blizzards in the US. I wonder if part of the problem is that they can't see the car in front? I'm sure there are other factors - inappropriate speeds for the conditions being the top one, along with ice - but it seems to be that this could be a factor too.

Interesting that my Canadian friend at the wedding knew about his fog lights. I wonder whether he got used to them here, or if the rules are different in Canada?

 

A British DJ, Simon Mayo, used to have an excellent slot called "Confessions", where people would write in about unfortunate events.

One guy wrote in about something that had happened to him in the 1950s, when London had its "pea souper" fogs. He cycled home in thick fog, with his friend; the two rode side-by-side. Both had lights on their bikes. They always took a short-cut across a park to get home. Halfway across the park, they heard a crash, and then a load of revving engines.

The fog was so thick that other drivers were just hanging on to the tail lights of the car in front. The driver of a bus couldn't even see that this was two guys on bikes: he just saw the two lights, thought they were a car, and followed them. Through the park, until the bus hit a gate. Dozens of cars had been following each other, behind the bus. Most of them got bogged in the park.

 

Computer interfaced, driving cameras work great on my car. They pierce darkness and many vision impairments, For example, the side cameras out perform the side mirrors.

Bob Wilson

 

From my 2022 Venza manual...

 

From my 2022 Venza manual...

 

That's a great feature. I wonder if the newer Toyota models have this now. I am pretty sure it was not available on my 2021 Prius Prime Auto headlight.

 

That's the case in the US. The technical name for those lights might accent. Front fog lights aren't required in Europe, but they do have standards covering their operation.

It sees our parking lights have been getting dimmer. The front yellow ones on my '90s and earlier cars could work as fog lights in a pinch. Tried that with the 2005 Prius, and I couldn't even tell they were on.

I think 2 is now common with DRLs on many cars. It may not work that way when you have the headlights manually on.

 

lol...I've seen dumb drivers all over the planet! I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the 90's enjoying the 120F+ (50 Celcius) heat and one morning I was driving into town when a very rare light rain moved into the area. Imagine roads that have months and months of caked up fine sand and oil from cars suddenly getting a little water on top...miles of miles of car accidents!!!

Of all the countries I've been in (18), Italian drivers are the best and the Germans are right up there, too.

 

That has been my take on factory "fog" lights for decades.

Aftermarket fog lights can be configured and aimed to worked properly, and be a real help in certain conditions. Back in the 1980s, I also used them to to improve the horrid low beam pattern of the old fashioned sealed beam headlights that were still required in the U.S. back then, after acquiring a car that had the worst of the four legal configurations.

But the common understanding back then was that real fog lights were only 48-state legal. Because the car makers wanted to build a 50-state legal product, they put on only the fake, cosmetic version of so-called "fog" lights. And buyers loved this decoration.

That likely is part of our problem. But considering the high speeds, unsafely short following distances, and refusal to slow down much when encountering sudden squalls or fog banks or dust or smoke clouds or poor traction conditions, I don't think mandating rear fog lights here would reduce the size of those huge pileups all that much.

Most bicyclists here, at least those that use any lights, use blinkies, not steady rear lights. It would take a seriously impaired driver to mistake a pair of these blinkies for a motor vehicle.

Not that we don't have a surplus of such drivers ....

Beware of overconfidence in today's equipment.

 

My 2002 GMC had factory equipped fogs with 55W white halogen bulbs. One side had a broken lens, so I decided to replace them. They were pretty decent lamps, with directional adjustments. Replaced the bulbs with 55W 3000K HID's and aimed them properly - They cut right thru the thick valley fog. Great contrast with the 3000K wavelength bulbs.

 

Out tilling the garden and my cell phone rang- answered and it was someone cold calling me saying they wanted to buy my house I could hear voices from a call center in the back round. When I got back inside I checked the area code it was from California - obviously a scam of some sort.

How dumb do these people think others are?

I put this one up there with the cold call we got during the last election - from an individual who wanted to tell me who to vote for - also from a California area code.

 

Around here the floodgates for contacts like that really opened around six years ago when a tax bill created so-called "opportunity zones", an incentive for neighborhood housing to be hoovered up by faceless absentee investors. I was getting multiple postcards a month wanting to discuss easy as-is cash offers on my house.

So maybe a non-scam, in the sense of for real being someone who would buy the house. Whether still a scam in a larger sense, maybe not for me to judge.

 

That's Southern California driving in a nutshell. I mean there's bad drivers everywhere, and odd colloquialisms of traffic and lane management to be had, but the socal vibe is to make your driving the weather's problem instead of the other way around. With similar poor results.

 

Both my Porsches had rear fog lights...a single light embedded in the brake light turn signal complex. I can't tell you the number of times I was told one of my lights were out or someone posted on a Porsche forum that one of theirs was not working. Designed that way. Just like the side parking lights for parking on the street as they do in Europe. Park with your turn signal on and a small fender mounted light was on on that side.