Parking Lights Really Lack a Purpose--by Day or Night

Dear Street Smart:

Why can General Motors introduce daytime driving lights even though California forbids the rest of us from driving with our parking lights on? I don't see the difference.

Robert D. Edmiston Mission Viejo Barry Felrice, an administrator with the National Highway Safety Administration, said the usual reason that states outlaw driving with parking lights is that the lights illuminate the dashboard and thus might cause drivers to forget to turn on headlights when night falls.

But the bottom line, Felrice said, is that parking lights aren't bright enough to improve the visibility of a car to oncoming traffic in the daytime.

By contrast, he said, the "daytime running lamps" that General Motors Corp. introduced this year on some of its new cars are bright enough to be seen even in the sunlight. They are low-intensity headlights that turn on automatically when the car is put in driving gear. In Canada, where such lights are required, studies show they have reduced accidents by 10%.

And the daytime running lamps are legal, because using headlights during the day is legal.

So what are you supposed to use parking lights for? Felrice isn't sure, but he believes they originally were required to make parked cars--apparently with the drivers still in them--more visible at night.

"To be honest, it is an old regulation that we picked up from industry standards," he said.

Felrice said his agency is in the midst of eliminating requirements that serve no purpose.

"I am going to add (parking lights) to our list," he said.

Dear Street Smart:

It is very frustrating to see the way people take advantage of handicap signs. It seems that some people must share them. You so often see someone parking in the handicap parking and just before they get out of the car they produce the sign and display it in the window. Then they jump out of the car and almost run into the store.

How about an idea to make it fair for the handicapped, so all their parking spaces are not taken by (members of) the general public who are quite capable of walking a distance. If a handicapped person were required to have his or her photo on the sign, it might just cut out all the lazy ones (who are not handicapped) from taking advantage of the reserved spots.

This idea is working in England, where my father, who is handicapped, visited a month ago. After all, we all have our photo on our driving license, so it should not pose any hardship to do the same to identify the handicapped.