Quote:
Originally Posted by Hylton
The reason for headlights in the daytime is that it has been statistically proven that they prevent head-on collisions. When you are reaching over to the radio or looking away from the street, your peripheral vision can pick up a car with it's lights on much quicker during the day then a car without lights. Besides, I think it looks good when car companies use the parking lights instead of the headlights.
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Ummm...no. Research, such as this, does not "prove" anything; the results only support the hypothesis. The study conducted by GM is methodologically lacking and does not do a good job with their pair-wise comparisons. They seemed to have taken a matched-assignment procedure, but failed to control for a number of other variables. The fact that GM had a vested interest in DRL's and was pushing for a federal mandate on them calls into question their objectivity.
A large-scale study by the Highway Loss Data Institute showed that "vehicles equipped with DRLs were involved in more accidents than similar vehicles without DRLs. The difference was minimal, but the meaning was straight forward, DRLs aggravate other motorists, obscure directional lights, "mask" other road users that don't have headlights on, or don't have headlights period (pedestrians and bicyclists) and their net effect on accident reduction is zero or worse."