In 40 years of HGV driving i've yet to drive one with any of these name plates or other rubbish lit up like The Cape launch pad inside the cab, nor would i do so, even putting the normal interior lights in in the dark causes the surrounds to be less visible.

Similarly i've never driven a vehicle festooned in extra front and rear side lights of all colours of the rainbow, nor have i ever needed up to 16 extra spotlights to see where i'm going, even in the days when 70+mph cruising was quite normal, because i never worked for that type of company nor was i going to spend several thousand pounds on trinkets to decorate someone else's vehicle, no i can't work it out either but each to their own.

As we touched on a few weeks ago as far as i'm concerned the only side lights on any lorry should be white to the front and red to the rear, those side marker lights used to be twin lensed white/red only so from the side view you would see the direction of the vehicle in an instant, then someone in a suit got involved, hence amber side markers became the norm, amber lights should only be indicators or other warning lights (such as flashing beacons), then when you see one it means something.

Times move on however, designers (experts, again) get their way, with fashion and 'the look' being all important, people who don't use the road in real world tell us how things will be, hence we've ended up with the present increasingly dangerous light wars front and rear where mine's even bigger and brighter (and camper) than yours, and if you can't actually see a genuine indicator behind all that light clutter, and increasingly you can't...tough...and if you can't see an indicator in the sunshine because its buried inside mirrored plastic lenses so sun glare can make it glitter prettily to please the glitterati, again tough.

The lunatics have been running the asylum for quite a while.

Edited by gordonbennet on 06/01/2017 at 21:34

The lighting regulations should be applied more strictly. It's not that unusual to see HGV's or boy racer cars showing blue lights to the front. That's but one small step away from showing blue flashing lights to the front.

Re:blue lights - We're in the opposite situation in Spain, where a lot of foot-dragging over implementation of an EU directive on "blue lights for all" has led to confusion and chaos as some newer ambulances and fire engines have blue lights fitted in anticipation of a sudden changeover, but the rest have amber. A new light bar can cost up to €2000, apparently, so a wrong choice could dent the local budget. (Decisions, decisions....)
There was one time when a jobsworth local cop in San Sebastian actually pulled over an ambulance on a "shout" and threatened to run him in for a lighting violation. Someone should have sat him down and made him watch "The Liver Run" from start to finish.
Of course, from a distance, a set of flashing ambers may or may not be on a life-saving mission and many are the times I have pulled over for what turned out to be a tow truck or street sweeper! (God knows how they managed to get an Armada together, etc...)