What's the point of front fog lights?

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In The Olden Days, when we used to get Proper Thick Fog (no doubt aided by all the coal fires) not this thin wispy stuff people call fog nowadays, we used to drive on foglights with the headlights off, head out of the window, using the drivers side lamp to pick out the white line, and the passenger one to see the curb, then drive at about 10 mph.

There were few cars parked on the roads then, and you had to be straining to see a slight darkening in the fog, which was the sign that you were about 20 feet from one.

Putting on the headlights just produced a wall of glare reflected from the fog that you couldn't see through.

Nowadays the fog is much thinner, and modern cars wont let you have just the foglights on at the front, so I'd say that they are pointless.

oldagetraveller1

peter_the_piper said:

Imagine you are driving in thick fog and there's a car trying to pull out of a side road on your side. Without the fog lights you'd possibly crash into him cos he didn't see you.

Or your dipped headlights which I'm sure would be switched on!?

Norman_Castle

Fog lights are normally low down so they light the road ahead without the driver looking through the glare reflected by the fog.

I often use mine, they tell other drivers I'm exited about owning a car and that I'm a like a proper driver, not like all these idiots who don't know what they're doing.

clive0510

Advocado said:

Driving in fog last night, for a few hundred metres it got genuinely very thick.

So for the first time in my life, I turned on my front fog lights and they did... absolutely nothing.  Are they supposed to light up the road?  Because they don't.

maybe they don't work. have you checked?

Car_54

Norman_Castle said:

Fog lights are normally low down so they light the road ahead without the driver looking through the glare reflected by the fog.

I often use mine, they tell other drivers I'm exited about owning a car and that I'm a like a proper driver, not like all these idiots who don't know what they're doing.

“Exited”. So you’re on your way out?