While driving the other night I spotted a car going down a main street with its headlights off, and I started pondering a hypothetical scenario.
I live in one of the older residential neighborhoods in my town. The streets are too narrow for all the cars parked at the curb these days — the streets were clearly laid out way back when it was almost unheard of for a household to have more than one car. Many of these streets and intersections are un- or insufficiently-lighted as well.
This leads to the simple fact that, without street lighting and with all the cars parked along the curbs blocking line-of-sight, a car coming down one of these streets with its headlights off after dark is going to be virtually invisible.
So let’s say I pull into an intersection and get broadsided by a car that I didn’t see because it was dark and the driver had his headlights off. When the cop shows up, how would I prove that the other driver had his headlights off, assuming the other driver and I were the only witnesses? If he broadsided me, odds are that his headlights are going to be smashed. The only “evidence” at that point would be whether or not the headlight switch inside the car was switched “on”, and assuming the other driver was not seriously injured there’s nothing stopping him from saying “oops” and flipping the switch before the cop arrives. Then it would just be me saying “they were off” and the other guy saying “no, they were on” back and forth.
Do cops have an established policy for deciding fault in a case like this?
Depending on the length of time before the cops get there, and the intelligence of the cop to think about it, the temperature of the lightbulb may indicate whether the lights had ever been on or not.
It’s a longshot, but look at the headlight bulb filaments. If the headlight glass is broken and the filaments are intact - that proves that the headlights were off when the glass was broken. And, if that’s the case, you can turn the headlights on and watch the filaments burn out.
But, there’s a good chance that the filaments could be destroyed by the impact. Or, that the driver turned the light switch on after the collision and burned up the bulb.
Not sure about front headlights, but accident investigators in the UK check rear brake bulbs to see if they were illuminated when the collision took place. If the lights were on there’s usually small pieces of glass fused to the bulbs due to the heat of the filament.
But that’s usually only in the case of fatal or otherwise serious accidents… unlikely your local cops will bother, so it’d be up to your insurance company to push for it I guess.
If any of the cars lights are damaged in the accident, it’s possible to tell whether they were burning at the time they failed.
If the lights were off, the break(s) in the bulb filament(s) will be cleanly broken, whereas if the lights were illuminated, the filaments will be stretched at the tips of the break, indicating the filaments were hot at the time they broke.
A good friend of mine was in a car accident a few years back. He was traveling along a back road in the early hours of the morning when he collided with a car that pulled out of a side road in front of him. The driver of the other car was killed.
It transpired that there was this myth doing the rounds at the time that at night, if you turned your own lights off at a junction you would be better able to see the lights of other vehicles approaching (:rolleyes:). The guy basically slowed approaching a junction, turned his lights off and rolled on through it. I guess he just wasn’t looking properly and didn’t see my friend coming. Bear in mind this was a very rural area, early in the morning, perhaps he really didn’t expect any other traffic. My friend never seen the other car until it had pulled out in front of him and it was too late.
My friend was fine, and was called to the inquest of course but no charges were brought against him, the police were satisfied he had done no wrong. It was a horrible event though for a young man with a newborn son.
Cool, thanks. The question has been bugging me ever since I thought of it.
I actually prefer driving these narrow streets at night rather than during daylight hours, purely because headlights make it easier to tell when another car is coming down the cross street. The overcrowded parallel parking is just horrible, especially given the sheer number of large pickups and SUVs parked along the curb. It’s like a wall lining the street. So I’ve gotten to where I practically depend on seeing those lights, and then start wondering, “what if…”