Tow Bar Electrics 7 or 13 pin plug

[charles]

My father had one with an electromagnet to hold it on the car body. Fine when there were steel bodied cars

[dennis]

You need to use parking lights by law then. Also there have to be two red at the rear and two white at the fron that mark the edges of the vehicle.

The no lights in a 30 zone have a lot of restrictions including not parking near junctions and having street lights.

[charles]

The police round here don't consider street lights necessary - just a 30mph limit.

[damduck-egg]

Don't see any mention of streetlights in the section below which I have cut and pasted from the Highway Code online.

250.Cars, goods vehicles not exceeding 1525 kg unladen weight, invalid carriages, motorcycles and pedal cycles may be parked without lights on a road (or lay-by) with a speed limit of 30 mph (48 km/h) or less if they are ?h at least 10 metres (32 feet) away from any junction, close to the kerb and facing in the direction of the traffic flow ?h in a recognised parking place or lay-by.

So you are wrong on that point . nearest junction , well that is about 300 metres away, What does the highway code say , at least 10 metres. So I'm clear on that point.

is it in a lay by or recognised parking place? Well it is not marked as such but the gravel indentation where I park it on those rare occasions is in front of the house next door which happens to be called the "Old Police House" , when it was still in use when my missus first moved here the bobby kept the panda car in the same spot overnight so there is good precedent.

Is it next to a kerb, yes the gravel patch has an edging of bricks about 6" from the Old Police stations hedge. I wrote no pavements not no kerb and kerb is what the Highway code says. So at the moment unless you can pull some other rules out of the hat that are not listed below instead of a vague statement of "The no lights in a 30 zone have a lot of restrictions including not parking near junctions and having street lights."

I'll maintain I can park there legally without lights and switching on the offside parking lamps is a belt and brace measure but not required by law or your flawed opinion.

G.Harman

[NY]

Presumably as more and more cars are fitted with side and tail lights which use LEDs rather than 6W filament bulbs, there will be less and less need for the one-sided parking lights because LEDs use such a small amount of power that it doesn't matter whether 2 or 4 lamps are lit - the car battery will still be fine in the morning.

[dennis]

I've never actually had a car that wouldn't start if you left all four marker lights on overnight. They are only 6W add another 6W for the numberplate lamp and you get a current drain of about 2A. So its about

30% of a typical batteries capacity if its a small engined car and less for a diesel or large car.

If it can't start after being on overnight its time to get it fixed.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No. Those old parking lights were a single unit which had to be mounted on the offside of the car. The back of the lamp being red, the front white.

They could be bought as a clip on unit to the driver's window - but many fitted them to the door pillar between front an back doors, and properly wired in with a switch on the dash. Car's didn't have cigarette lighters in those days, so you'd need to fit some sort of plug and socket anyway.

And IIRC, used something like a 3 watt lamp.

1 amp would be the load of one sidelight and tail light.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My last car had twin sidelights each side, two lamps in each tail light, and two numberplate lights. And then all the panel lamps. So rather more than 2A. But it had the German parking light system anyway, which automatically reduced the load to under 1 amp when used.

I'd hope cars with LEDs would be less still.

[Nightjar]

On 07-Mar-17 8:10 PM, dennis@home wrote: ...

Oddly enough, the UK lighting regulations don't seem to make any reference to street lights being necessary for the exemption; only a

30mph limit.

[dennis]

I know what they were, they aren't legal to use as parking lights in the UK. They may have been in the '20s.

[Andy Burns]

Though they were still being sold in the 70's

[Nightjar]

They were widely used in the 1950s, even on lit roads, but less so in the 1960s. IIRC, there was a new set of lighting regulations around 1964 and I suspect that was when the rules changed.

[charles]

and in the 50's/60s.

[dennis]

I am pretty sure they used to but it appears that not since 1985. Pretty silly really. Its also silly that cars are exempt even though many of them are heavier than 1500kg when goods vehicles are not exempt. I can just see people rushing out to clean their reflectors after a crash just so they can claim they were parked legally, you do have to have clean, ie. working reflectors to park without lights even though it doesn't mention that either.

[dennis]

There are many things sold that are illegal to use. Being able to buy something is not a perfect guide to them being legal.

[charles]

but since reflectors are compulsary on cars, there should be no need to mention it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They were legal in the '50s, dennis. Why not just take note of what those who know about such things say?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm trying to date when they were required by my father's cars.

I'd guess at most of the '50s. Of course you could leave the sidelights on if you preferred. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The legal requirement for rear reflectors came in round about the same time as the need for that parking light. As did the requirement for twin tail lights. All somewhere round about the start of the '50s. I remember my father had a '40s Morris Minor which had to be converted to twin tail lights. It did appear to have two as built, but only one wired up. Talk about penny pinching. ;-)

[dennis]

I had a hillman avenger, no reversing lights. To fit them you needed the switch and two bulbs, all the wiring and lamps were already there. Or was that the Triumph herald and you just needed the bulbs on the avenger? One of them needed the switch the other didn't. That was penny pinching.