The law states the HEADLIGHTS must be turned on. Not the DRL.s.
In Minnesota, you must have your headlights and taillights on when visibility is reduced.
Minnesota Statute 169.48 (Vehicle lighting), subd. 1(a) says every vehicle on a highway must display lighted headlamps and lighted tail lamps:
From sunset to sunrise
At any time when it is raining, snowing, sleeting, or hailing
At any other time when visibility is impaired by weather, smoke, fog or other conditionsor when there isn’t sufficient light to clearly see people/vehicles on the highway from 500 feet ahead
So for fog/rain/snow and for times when you can’t clearly see 500 feet ahead, you should be running headlights + tail lights, not just daytime running lights.
Indeed it does. But, if someone chooses (out of ignorance) to not turn on their headlights, at least DRLs provide some visibility to other motorists, especially if they are LED DRLs, and especially if the DRLs also turn the tail lights on.
I wish that everyone obeyed that regulation, but–just as with so many other regs–there will always be some folks who choose to ignore it.
How about the folks who fail to clear snow from their vehicle before driving? I can’t be the only person to have seen cars whose tail lights and/or headlights were completely obscured by snow, and in some cases, the driver is peering through a tiny space that he has cleared on the windshield. There are definitely doofuses on the roads.
Washington state they can’t pull you overfor just having the 3rd brake light out, at least as long as the other brake lights work. Our priest uses an led 3rd brake light but replacement is under $100 from dormant.
They do in Maryland. The legislature had a big push to create an annual safety inspection to replace the current program that performs a safety inspection when a vehicle changes hands. Lots of representatives thought that was a bad idea. The compromise was to give the state and local police the right to stop a vehicle if a safety violation, like burned out lights, are seen. If you are busted, you have a couple of weeks to get the violation fixed and present your vehicle to a state or local police station for inspection. If it’s fixed, they sign off and you send the validated violation to the state office in Annapolis.
Overstaffed? My local police are busy servicing calls for disturbances and domestic assault. I frequently see vehicles with burned out light bulbs and seldom see police perform routine traffic stops.
Only in recent years has there been an enforcement effort on unregistered vehicles. I had two co-workers who drove daily for 2 years with expired license plates.
That may be the same everywhere. I have been ticketed by the state patrol in rural areas for driving without a front license plate, then inspected and approved in town after obtaining a new plate. Local police don’t stop or ticket vehicles for operating without a front plate, that would occupy all of their time.
I wonder if they sometimes use it as an excuse to stop cars for other reasons. I was driving back to my office from a remote work location about lunch time. Several police vehicles pulled me over on a side road in front of my office building. They claimed I had a brake light out. When I got home I discovered that all my lights were functioning properly and I got that verified by the local state police a day later, no repairs. It turned out that there was a drive by shooting at a bus stop a couple blocks from my office. My guess is they were stopping cars under the guise of a safety stop but we’re looking for the gunman.
