Business Columnists Car Talk

Car Talk

Who’s the bigger jerk here?

I have an argument with my no-good brother-in-law. He always drives at night with his fog lights on in addition to his headlights. He says he can see better. I tell him, “Sure, but what about the way they blind oncoming traffic?” He says if they were too bright, then it wouldn’t be legal to have them. I tell him, “But all that bright light up close actually reduces your long-range vision.”

He says, “How can more light be bad?”

I say, “And it makes your engine work harder, shortening the life of some components and reducing mileage.”

He says the car was designed for it, and he’s done it for years with all kinds of cars. I use fog lights three or four times a year — essentially, on deserted county roads in the fog. Which one of us is a bigger jerk?


RAY: Well, the jury’s deliberating hard on that one. But they’re leaning toward you.

TOM: There are two kinds of supplemental headlights. Fog lights are mounted down low and illuminate the road right in front of the car.

RAY: You may have noticed that when it’s foggy, the closer you get to the ground, the less dense the fog is (and in fact, using your high beams in fog makes it harder to see). So fog lights light up the lowest, closest portion of the roadway.

TOM: And since they’re aimed down at the road for 30 feet or so in front of the car, they shouldn’t bother oncoming drivers much, if at all.

RAY: So if he’s really using fog lights, you should get off his case.

TOM: He’s using a tiny bit more gasoline to power the extra lights, but the difference in mileage is barely measurable. So if he prefers more light to an extra fraction of a tenth of a mile per gallon, he’s free under the U.S. Constitution to make that trade-off.

RAY: The second type of lights you see are driving lights, essentially an extra set of more powerful high beams.

TOM: Driving lights are aimed up and far ahead to light up as much of the road and roadside for as long a distance as possible. So driving lights will blind oncoming drivers, and they need to be switched off when another vehicle approaches.

RAY: If he he’s leaving driving lights on all the time (even if they’re legal and correctly aimed), that’s dangerous.

TOM: If that’s the case, he deserves to be harassed by an annoying brother-in-law. And you sound like just the guy for the job!

King Features Syndicate

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