ART OF FOG LIGHTING DISCUSSED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19379, 31 December 1932, Page 12

ART OF FOG LIGHTING DISCUSSED

EFFICACY OF YELLOW LIGHTS. When the world’s lighting experts met at Cambridge, England, some months ago, they attended a demonstration. of motor-lamps that sought by divers means to avoid dazzle, but neither their united wisdom nor the demonstration produced a solution of that most troublesome problem. One motoring question, however, the experts did settle. They unanimously agreed that one’s faith, in yellow light for piercing fog is a pathetic delusion. Yellow light is no better than any other colour. A tinted lamp seems more penetrative merely because it reduces the intensity of the beam light. Tissue paper or a coat of whiting on a lamp glass would be just as effective—anything that softens the beam. What happens in fog is thas the light of one’s lamps is reflected back by the minute drops of water suspended in the air, so that the brighter the light the stronger the reflection. The whole art of fog lighting is never to get the rays from any lamp between you and the road or kerb or the object you are trying to see. Spot lights are the right-hand top corner of the windscreen are worse than useless, and the offside headlight is not much better, unless it can be dipped to shine straight down. A dip-and-swivel arrangement gives best driving light in fog and failing that a special fog lamp with a narrow concentrated beam set as low as possible to shine along the kerb or road