Last night I flew back from Rotterdam, a city that looks after the motorist. A city where roadworks on motorways are carried out underneath a temporary bridge over which the traffic flows eliminating the need to cone off any lanes. A city in a country the size of Wales with 15 million inhabitants. A city in country that recognises that its economy would grind to a halt if its motorists were forced off the roads. A city in a country that invented the Gatso, but that's beside the point. In fact all this is beside the point.
Once I've landed in London City airport the next part of my journey is to get on the extortionately expensive City Airport Shuttle Bus which takes me to Liverpool Street and its handy connection to the central line. And whilst I was on the bus last night, for part of the journey to give me something to do I decided to count the cars I could see which had a broken headlight. In the two miles or so along Commercial Road in which I was doing this I saw twelve cars with defective lights, and this does not include those driving on just sidelights, or using their idiot-warning lights, another offence but once again beside the point.
Twelve cars. Twelve unroadworthy cars in 2 miles of road over a period of just a few minutes. If I was a traffic copper I could have doled out 36 points and hundreds of pounds in fines in no time at all. My boss would have been elated, the rest of the force would have been rolling around in a big bed of cash and I would have been promoted to sergeant before you could say "fixed penalty notice". But I wasn't a traffic copper and neither, it appeared, was anyone else on the road.
Thinking that this was probably some sort of anomaly and that there must be a weird bit of electrical freakery in the East End that causes bulbs to fail uncontrollably I decided to repeat the experiment when I got off the tube in West London. I decided to count the number of cars with one corner unlit between Haven Green and my flat, a distance of about half a mile and a walk of about ten minutes. This time the count was ten, and those were just corners I could see, ie two corners per car; the rear lights of cars in my direction and the headlights of oncoming cars. It is, therefore, probably safe to assume that there were somewhere in the region of twenty cars between Haven Green and my flat with a faulty light. Twenty unroadworthy cars. And I didn't even check their tyre tread or brake pads. Another sixty penalty points and another few hundred in fines, should a traffic copper have been present. Well, the traffic copper would have had to give a damn in the first place I suppose.
Changing a headlight bulb or a tail light bulb is not a difficult task. Checking that your headlights and tail lights are all working takes about five seconds. Why is it that people are being allowed to get away with such obvious defects on their vehicles? Where are all the coppers?
I'm not sure what I'm getting at. Congratulations, you've just wasted a few minutes of your life reading this, but take with you some consolation in the fact that I wasted a lot longer writing it. I think I just want to add my voice to the "it's not just speed that's an issue, stop concentrating solely on people doing 78mph on the motorway" crowd. For every light that's out there's also a bald tyre, a tailgater, an uninsured vehicle and a kid not wearing a seatbelt. And we don't have bald-tyre cameras yet.
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Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
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Last night I flew back from Rotterdam, a city that looks after the motorist. A city where roadworks on motorways are carried out underneath a temporary bridge over which the traffic flows eliminating the need to cone off any lanes.
That's an interesting one. I would imagine that it'd have to be a MOJOR bit of roadworks, if it disrupts traffic less to build a bridge over it than just to do it. I can't imagine making a 'temporary' bridge which can take the weight of continuous traffic is a quick job.
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It seemed to be one unit that they moved along the roadway as the roadworks progressed. It even changed carriageways one weekend when I was back in London.
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Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
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>>>>>>Changing a headlight bulb or a tail light bulb is not a difficult task<<<<<<<<
Not sure that is right. Seen on here and elsewhere on certain cars it needs the attention of a garage to change.......
dvd
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Rover 75 for example. They have to practically take the front wing off.
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Some current Renaults are tricky, Ford C-MAX, VW Passat and probably many more....
Absolutely crazy.
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You're right. My bad.
Changing a headlight "shouldn't" be a difficult task.
Perhaps if faulty lights were punished a little more frequently the manufacturers would make basic car maintenance acts such as this a touch easier for Joe Public to do.
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Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
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"roadworks on motorways are carried out underneath a temporary bridge over which the traffic flows"
Maybe not quite the same thing but there?s a temporary flyover near the Hogarth roundabout in West London, I?ve driven over it a few times. I may have invented this but I think it?s been there a couple of decades and is temporary in a permanent kind of way.
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You used a tool that has long been absent from the Police toolbox, the "MK1 Eyeball". Unfortunately until there are more traffic police back on the road, the situation will worsen. It is accepted that people who are happy to break what they see as trivial law often continue the depth of their law breaking until they are detected.
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Maybe not quite the same thing but there?s a temporary flyover near the Hogarth roundabout in West London, I?ve driven over it a few times. I may have invented this but I think it?s been there a couple of decades and is temporary in a permanent kind of way.
You're right, I've used it quite a bit when I used to work down Surbiton way. Very handy for getting back into Hammersmith.
You invented it? I'm impressed. It's a great idea.
The thing I saw in Rotterdam was a little different. Almost like a bailey bridge. A ramp up and a ramp down with one or two hundred yards of raised roadway inbetween, 3 lanes wide. The men work underneath it. Looks like it can be easily moved in very few pieces to a site further down the road.
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Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
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"You invented it? I'm impressed. It's a great idea"
Ha ha! Yeah didn?t read quite like it sounded in my mind.
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I was talking to an AA man who was sorting out a problem with a visitors Polo.
He said, from his experience, when he asked owners of poorly, if at all, serviced cars "When was it last serviced?" the reply was often ...recently. Enquiring closer it turns out the service was in fact the MoT and NO servicing was done.
He said often the AA is called to fix faults that a service would have cured.
The Polo owner sort of admitted that three and a half years ago it was last serviced. The easily seen pollen filter was totally black and clogged so the time lapse seemed accurate.
With this approach to motoring by a Mum with a young child ....lights working? Yes for the MoT but otherwise...totally optional.
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I posted on the defective lights issue a couple of weeks ago - I thought I'd got it out of my system, but it still drives me nuts. I reckon about 1 in 20 vehicles around here (Bury St Edmunds) has one or more duff lights. Where is roadfuzz???
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Take the point about difficulties of now changing bulbs as being a major factor. I have always carried a spare set of bulbs and replaced as soon as one fails. So when the dipped headlight failed one night on my Alhambra I took out my spare bulb and opened the bonnet. Whoops, how can I get in there? So doing the right thing I checked in the manual,where it says to "refer to your dealer"! I was forced to drive home that night with only one headlight, despite carrying a spare bulb. The Seat dealer changed it the next day whilst I waited and had to remove the entire front light unit. So over to the manufacturers!
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I was forced to drive home that night with only one headlight, despite carrying a spare bulb.
I have a similar situation with my Mondeo.
I carry bulbs and have to unscrew the grill and lamp units to change bulbs.
What I have done is to change my sidelight bulbs to much brighter, but same wattage ones in case dip beam fails.
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I can replace a headlight bulb in the dark in my son's old Fiesta, and it takes about 5 minutes - including going through the draws in the garage to locate a spare. Such is progress!
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Most of the bulbs are easy to change on my Rover 25, except the n/s headlight bulb that blew the other morning whilst on way to MOT. Couldn't face trying to change it myself as was suited up for work and it was raining heavily (not unusual in Manchester). Paid garage £21 to replace a H7 bulb of which £7 was labour.
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When I was last in the Audi dealership the service manager was on the phone. An A2 owner wanted a headlamp bulb changing. Quoted cost for the work was about £43+VAT - the bulb was £9.
Unless you have arms like an octopus the A2 also requires the unit removing - it's a simple job, but one you need to know how to do (good old internet for that answer), but you also need a torx screwdriver set (which is not something everyone owns).
Retail prices for cars are dropping all the time, service intgervals are increasing, what were once simple jobs are being made complicated by manufacturers so you have to visit the dealer for the job to be carried out and pay them accordingly.
smart fortwo is the same - front off to change a bulb, or train a small child who won't get their knuckles skinned!
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I absolutely agree.
I have posted a few items on here re general problems with vehicles being wrongly/insufficiently illuminated .My last one produced a sarcastic response from someone who seems to think it's a triviality.
For me it's an aspect of understanding and responding to your obligations to others.
My experience , over the last couple of weeks, is that probably as much as 10% of vehicles have some form of lighting defect . Given that for many cars, the servicing now is maybe once a year - and even then, I doubt the lights get checked, even if the service schedule requires it- it is very much the responsibility of the driver to check them. That could be as simple as checking your lights parked in front of full-length shop window.
My observation is that most people don't check, some do and then don't bother to correct it. I get easily wound up when I flash people to tell them and they flash me back because they think I am a mate they don't recognise.
In general this seems to be a much worse problem here than in , for example, the Netherlands or France, countries where I am able to make a comparison.
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Is it still compulsory to carry a set of spare bulbs in e.g. France? If so, how do they cope with those cars that can only have bulbs replaced by a dealer?
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It is the old story,if there were more coppers handing out tickets for defective lights it might have an effect.A mate of mine got a twenty quid fine for having a rear light out,but that was a few years ago.
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Maybe just a police ad. campaign would help, to say police will be cracking down on it.
Is it because so few new car owners work on and service their own cars these days, they are no longer used to having to check and change things?
Or is it company car owners who just think, "I dont care, its not my car, if it goes wrong the company sorts it."
A mate of mine (not mechanically minded) took his company car in for a service a while back, and came back saying, "I cant believe it, I've been driving it with hardly any oil in the engine". So I asked when he last checked the oil and he said, "well its a new, modern car, I shouldnt have to check the oil should I? It shouldnt use or lose any oil"
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The dealers have made this harder with electronic systems which the DIYer doesn't have access to, but bulb changes should be simple enough for anyone to do.
The rear clusters on most are held in hand tight by a couple of plastic bolts or Butterfly wingnuts and generally use a common bulb style the fronts are harder, some require removal of bodywork to access the lamp housing or use screws with uncommon head designs - but they don't supply a kit with the correct screwdriver, i think the idea is that the common DIYer doesn't have the beam testing equitment where as a garage has.
They always try to throw you off the scent my handbook says I need a H1 for the headlamp but the bulb is marked H4.
what is worse is removing the front headlight to change the front indicator (in the same housing )but thats life style agin leads the way.
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The next time I have a headlight bulb go I will just switch on my sporty lights to compensate, like other drivers do!
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L\'escargot.
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