17 replies to this topic

[Brams96]

Is it legal to have white lights (leds)behind your grille to light up the area when driving? Are there any MOT issues or any other legal issues with doing this? Would they have to stay on constant or could they move like knight rider style (but obviously not flash). They would be independantly switched from the main head lights.

[Mini 360]

Legal yes but the knight rider idea would be a no no I would think.

[Brams96]

LOL - yeah probably a bit 80's eh.

[Mini 360]

Not so much that, its a flashing light thats not orange, so illegal. Plus flashing light in white are used by police, so could be done for impersonating police etc etc. Seen it happen in my local town for that very reason.

[Brams96]

I wouldn't make it so it actually flashes just maybe scrolls slowly from side to side or middle to outside

[AVV IT]

Legal yes

I'm not too sure about the legality of it, surely it depends on when you actually use them. I'd imagine that any white light on the front of the car that does not conform to the regs for a side light, or dipped beam headlight would be deemed as optional headlamp like a spot lamp/driving lamp is. Therefore like spotlamps wouldn't it need to automatically switch off with the main beam headlamps to be legal?

[1994alex]

I had a chat with a few police officers about this when i wanted to modify my corsa you can not have them on while driving like on fast and furious with the green led strips under neath the honda civics.
What I was told was you cant have blue (police), green (doctors), red ( I cant remember this one ) as it is classed as impersonating an emergency vehicle.
You are only allowed to have them on, on a private property, or at a show.

Alex

[Brams96]

Wouldn't they be the same as having daytime running lights like Audi's & the other aftermarket ones? I know LED strips under your car can only be used when stationary but lights behind your grille wouldn't be the same as those. I suppose it could be switched on/off with the side lights if that meant covering things legally.

[charie t]

Audi DRL's do not flash at all. You can have them permanently on as sidelights/DRL or not at all.
Think of it coming towards you with somebody elses car grill blinding away at you or flashing. How distracting/off putting do you think it would be. Its bad enough when the oncoming headlights are not fitted corectly or incorrectly adjusted

[Brams96]

As I said in my third post, they wouldn't flash. You can get kits that change the lights but can also stay on constantly which is what they would do when driving, I'm sure this could be done through the ignition/light switch.
The lights wouldn't be 'blinding away' as you say only back lighting the grille area.
So again they wouldn't flash or change in any way while driving.

Edited by Brams96, 08 February 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Bean]

How do trucks get away with it? They have all sorts of lights on the front of their cabs, which don't seem to be a problem?

[mini-luke]

Good point that, I saw one yesterday with a line of blue LED's on the front.

[AVV IT]

As far as I'm aware every lamp fitted to a vehicle has to comply with the Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989. If your going to run them as a daylight running device, then I assume they would have to conform to the regulations for "dim-dip devices and running lamps". You can check those regs here, http://www.legislati...6/contents/made if you can make any sense of them that is.

How do trucks get away with it? They have all sorts of lights on the front of their cabs, which don't seem to be a problem?

Just because they do it and get away with it ,doesn't necessarily make it legal though. I too regularly see them displaying a line of blue lights, which I'm pretty certain can only legally be displayed on emergency vehicles.

I wonder if it might be something to do with additional marker lamp regulations, basically any vehicle over 12.2m long, legally has to display certain additional lamps. If the vehicle exceeds 18.3m then it has to display a whole host of additional marker lamps at specified heights and distances. My guess is that the lighting regulations for lorries are so complex, that the average police officer probably doesn't know them well enough to be able to differentiate between which lamps are legal and which aren't.

Edited by AVV IT, 08 February 2012 - 11:04 AM.

[Brams96]

Good find & not too expensive. It does say however make sure they conform to local traffic regs.

Edited by Brams96, 08 February 2012 - 09:49 PM.