Nasty accident in the 70s

[rhyds]

At the risk of sounding like a div, when were foglights first used commonly on vehicles, as I am curious as to if that could've had an impact?

I would postulate that cars with their rear foglights on are less safe than those without. Foglights are likely to 'drown out' brakelights and hazard lights.

For high-intensity lights to 'drown out' other lights, they have to be seen in the first place; that is only likely to occur in conditions of good visibility. In conditions of poor visibility then any light is better than no light at all. Rear fogs have been mandated for so many years now that you'd be hardpressed to find a car in daily use that didn't have them; even my 1980 Triumph Spitfire has rear fog lights. The correct discipline to use these lights correctly is perhaps what is sometimes lacking today.

Also, modern fog lamps are generally sited well away from the brake lamps, as well as cars having a 3rd high level brake light.

[Bendo]

I would postulate that cars with their rear foglights on are less safe than those without. Foglights are likely to 'drown out' brakelights and hazard lights.

For high-intensity lights to 'drown out' other lights, they have to be seen in the first place; that is only likely to occur in conditions of good visibility. In conditions of poor visibility then any light is better than no light at all. Rear fogs have been mandated for so many years now that you'd be hardpressed to find a car in daily use that didn't have them; even my 1980 Triumph Spitfire has rear fog lights. The correct discipline to use these lights correctly is perhaps what is sometimes lacking today.

Also, modern fog lamps are generally sited well away from the brake lamps, as well as cars having a 3rd high level brake light.

And when they aren't it isn't the end of the world as there is generally only 1 fog lamp with a bulb in, apart from the idiots who decided to put a bulb in the other one because it looks better.

[rhyds]

For high-intensity lights to 'drown out' other lights, they have to be seen in the first place; that is only likely to occur in conditions of good visibility. In conditions of poor visibility then any light is better than no light at all. Rear fogs have been mandated for so many years now that you'd be hardpressed to find a car in daily use that didn't have them; even my 1980 Triumph Spitfire has rear fog lights. The correct discipline to use these lights correctly is perhaps what is sometimes lacking today.

Also, modern fog lamps are generally sited well away from the brake lamps, as well as cars having a 3rd high level brake light.

And when they aren't it isn't the end of the world as there is generally only 1 fog lamp with a bulb in, apart from the idiots who decided to put a bulb in the other one because it looks better.

Legally you only require a fog lamp on the offside/driver's side of the car or one that's centrally mounted. Some cars have two from the factory (which is perfectly legal) while others take advantage of the fact you only need one reverse lamp on the nearside/passenger side of the car to use the same light clusters/holes in the bumper to provide LHD and RHD fog/reverse lamps by either changing the lens colour from clear to red or fitting clear/red bulbs.

[Ruperts Trooper]

10 year bump but the M1 Fog sign has had me Googling fog related disasters and the footage from this one appears to be the M1 near J13 in 1972 where 9 died.

A year before a pile up near J11 killed several too.

Thankfully those days are mostly behind us.

Pileups in fog are rarer in part due to better warnings and CCTV coverage of motorways but they still happen. Drivers and passengers in 1970 were mostly unrestrained and car crash worthiness was abysmal so the toll of dead and seriously injured today tends to be much lower. Just to remind everyone here are some relatively recent incidents.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transpo ... 99228.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews ... k-fog.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_M5_motorway_crash

The increase in the number of radar and lidar based collison warning and avoidance systems show considerable promise for the future in mitigating these accidents in the future. My Ford has this fitted and it operates in 3 stages
1) The system detects a high closure and initiates a highly visible and audible warning
2) The brakes are precharged
3) Unless braking happens or the system is overidden the brakes automatically apply.

At motorway speeds its unlikely to prevent a crash but it will reduce the severity of the impact as the kinetic energy of the vehicle increases with the square of the velocity and its that energy that kills people.

Such systems do nothing to restrain the vehicle behind from rear-ending you, especially if it's a HGV.

[KeithW]

Pileups in fog are rarer in part due to better warnings and CCTV coverage of motorways but they still happen. Drivers and passengers in 1970 were mostly unrestrained and car crash worthiness was abysmal so the toll of dead and seriously injured today tends to be much lower. Just to remind everyone here are some relatively recent incidents.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transpo ... 99228.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews ... k-fog.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_M5_motorway_crash

The increase in the number of radar and lidar based collison warning and avoidance systems show considerable promise for the future in mitigating these accidents in the future. My Ford has this fitted and it operates in 3 stages
1) The system detects a high closure and initiates a highly visible and audible warning
2) The brakes are precharged
3) Unless braking happens or the system is overidden the brakes automatically apply.

At motorway speeds its unlikely to prevent a crash but it will reduce the severity of the impact as the kinetic energy of the vehicle increases with the square of the velocity and its that energy that kills people.

Such systems do nothing to restrain the vehicle behind from rear-ending you, especially if it's a HGV.

They do if the vehicle behind you has them.

[Moore_O]

I would say that front foglights remained a rarity until about 10 years ago and even today they could not be described as commonplace as it tends to be something you see on high spec end of the market

I'd need to see the wiring diagram - but the extra lights on that Zodiac could be auxiliary driving lamps, which come on with the main beam rather than fog lights which are usually fitted lower down.

I remember a diagram in the Readers Digest AA Book of the Road about the benefits of extra lamps. Apparently what you wanted was a spot lamp on the nearside to illuminate the kerb, and a diffuse floodlight on the offside, for some reason. It might have been the other way round... it made sense at the time. Has anyone got a 60s copy of the Reader Digest AA Book of the Road?

[Glen]

Such systems do nothing to restrain the vehicle behind from rear-ending you, especially if it's a HGV.

They do if the vehicle behind also has it, which is more likely to be present in an HGV, since it's been a requirement in new vehicles for three years.

[WHBM]

I'd need to see the wiring diagram - but the extra lights on that Zodiac could be auxiliary driving lamps, which come on with the main beam rather than fog lights which are usually fitted lower down.

I remember a diagram in the Readers Digest AA Book of the Road about the benefits of extra lamps. Apparently what you wanted was a spot lamp on the nearside to illuminate the kerb, and a diffuse floodlight on the offside, for some reason. It might have been the other way round... it made sense at the time. Has anyone got a 60s copy of the Reader Digest AA Book of the Road?

If you look closely at the nearside light on that Zodiac you will see it has a yellow bulb. And that the two lights seem to differ, along the lines described. Yes, I recall a description like you quote, and we had the AA Book Of The Road as well (so did everyone else).

[KeithW]

I'd need to see the wiring diagram - but the extra lights on that Zodiac could be auxiliary driving lamps, which come on with the main beam rather than fog lights which are usually fitted lower down.

I remember a diagram in the Readers Digest AA Book of the Road about the benefits of extra lamps. Apparently what you wanted was a spot lamp on the nearside to illuminate the kerb, and a diffuse floodlight on the offside, for some reason. It might have been the other way round... it made sense at the time. Has anyone got a 60s copy of the Reader Digest AA Book of the Road?

No but I recall that it was quite common at the time , in fact it was all the fashion to have a pair of fog lamps and a pair of spot lamps mounted. You might only have an 850 Mini but with the lamps and a set of go faster stripes you could pretend it was a Mini Cooper. This one is the real deal I believe.



That of course was an era in which standard car headlamps were particularly weedy. One problem of course was that in the 1960's most cars had dynamos rather than alternators and they often could not handle the extra load. As I recall the spot lamp was normally mounted on the offside to pick out the cats eyes and distant objects while the diffuse lamp picked out the kerb and pedestrians.

By the 1970's halogen headlights were arriving but low mounted diffuse fog lights were still a common aftermarket fit and I found them helpful as they reduced glare. The Fiat 132 1600 GLS owned had a pair fitted when I bought it and very useful they were on Romney Marsh. where most unclassified roads had a rather unforgiving drainage ditch alongside.

[Glenn A]

This might be a PIF and not real, but for all this PIF is more about keeping your distance, a car that is overloaded with luggage like the BMC ADO16, which was more common in the early seventies, surely would have contributed to the pile up on the D2 as braking and handling would have been compromised. Also cars in those days often had weak drum brakes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhXjNr0uBI

[Ruperts Trooper]

This might be a PIF and not real, but for all this PIF is more about keeping your distance, a car that is overloaded with luggage like the BMC ADO16, which was more common in the early seventies, surely would have contributed to the pile up on the D2 as braking and handling would have been compromised. Also cars in those days often had weak drum brakes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhXjNr0uBI

Drum brakes of those days were quite able to outperform the tyres of the day, ie locking the brakes.

[KeithW]

This might be a PIF and not real, but for all this PIF is more about keeping your distance, a car that is overloaded with luggage like the BMC ADO16, which was more common in the early seventies, surely would have contributed to the pile up on the D2 as braking and handling would have been compromised. Also cars in those days often had weak drum brakes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhXjNr0uBI

The luggage is not the problem its the driving too close that is the killer and this is just as much a problem today as it was then. The reality is that at 60 mph you are covering 26.8 m or 88 ft per second. Average reaction time for an adult human is 1/4 second so even if you are paying full attention by the time you have reacted to a stationary hazard you car will have moved 22 ft or nearly 7 m closer to it. In good visibility you should never pass a given point in the road less than 2 seconds from vehicle in front , in fog you should increase that.

What terrified me then and now is the column of cars following each other down the motorway spaced at two or three car lengths apart. If the lead vehicle brakes the first vehicle in line may react in time but the second vehicle has now closed the gap and even if he brakes in time the rest will not. Voila you have an instant multiple collision. Worse if you are distracted by the radio , your phone or the kids you may not even register the hazard before you hit it. I found that many drivers reacted to fog by actually closing the gap so they could see the rear lights of the car in front - Understandable crawling through thick fog in town but sheer madness on a high speed road.

The Midlands are prone to the creation of banks of fog between sections of good visibility . You can descend into a valley and suddenly run into thick fog that has condensed out of the air which I suspect is why so many multiple pile ups happened on the M1/M6 rather than on the A1 although the section from Wetherby to Doncaster has its moments. The fog warnings prior to VMS and CCTV were often ignored because they were unspecific. This meant drivers were passing warning after warning where the visibility was fine and deciding it was a false alarm. Now the controllers can put up warnings such as 'Fog J6 to J9'

[Glenn A]

Serious accidents on motorways are thankfully a lot rarer these days. Motor vehicles have much better brakes, better safety equipment, and another contributing factor must be the use of tachographs in lorries and buses that outlaw the really excessive driving hours that were common in the seventies. Also on D2s, the elimination of many at grade junctions, central reservations without barriers, and upgrading some of the most dangerous ones like the A74 to D3M, have made these safer.