Helpdesk

THIS WEEK:Faulty lights on vehicles

From PD, Cork:

In November last, in dark and poor weather, I mistook a car for a motor bike due to faulty front lights. Fortunately a collision was avoided in time. Since then in my regular driving I have noticed a proliferation of faulty front and rear lights on vehicles I meet or drive behind (in some cases, no brake lights at all).

My driving would be mostly city or motorway. A casual monitoring since last November suggests a ratio of one in four vehicles with blatantly faulty front or rear lights, not including indicators, reversing or plate illumination lights. It would be interesting to know what the Garda points issued rate for this safety critical offence is. And what is the RSA’s position on this problem? I do not believe I have seen any awareness advertising in the news media for this issue.

It’s a serious problem that I have encountered first-hand during the winter as well. A car executive recently visiting from Germany also expressed his surprise at how many cars he spotted with faulty lights in his short trip through Dublin.

While there are no official statistics to show how big a problem the issue of broken headlights has become, there is enough anecdotal evidence for it to be of serious concern to all motorists.

According to the RSA there is a plan to conduct an observational study of vehicle lighting later in the year. “It will look at issues such as daytime running lights, misuse of fog lights and defective lighting. Results should be available towards the end of 2012,” says Brian Farrell.

While it is an offence to drive a vehicle with broken or faulty lighting, it is not a penalty point offence.

According to Brian Farrell, however, “the Minister for Transport recently announced his intention to introduce a number of road safety offences into the penalty points system this year. Defective vehicle lighting is one of the proposed offences. Details of the specific introduction date or the number of points, to be applied to a driver’s licence for committing this offence, have not been announced.”

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