Head Lamps or Head lights
Safe driving is dependent on our ability to react to any situation, but we can only respond to what we can see. Low beams and high beams are our first line of defense against poor visibility, but often their range falls short. Driving lights pick up the slack. They're designed to boost the intensity and range of your high beams, showering the roadway with brilliant light. When we can see clearly, we're able to rapidly respond to whatever may come our way.
If you think about it, driving lights give you the power to peer into the future. All their extra light reveals the road that lies ahead of you, and you can use that knowledge of upcoming conditions to plan your next course of action. Without the foresight that driving lights deliver, your ability to respond to hazards is greatly diminished. Because of this special characteristic, driving lights are most effective for nighttime highway driving because of the higher cruising speeds.
Driving lights generate beams that are more focused than fog lights because they're engineered to travel farther in advance of your vehicle. As such, correctly aiming them is crucial to improve your own visibility while avoiding blinding other motorists. Follow these S.A.E. tips to properly align your driving lights.
Mount your driving lights on the front of your vehicle 14"–30" up from the ground.
Park 25' away from a flat wall, like a garage door or the side of a building. Level ground gives you the most accurate results.
Measure the distance from the center of your driving light down to the pavement, and mark that distance on the wall with chalk.
Flip on the lights and find the center of the hot spot, which is the intense inner circle of the beam. Tilt the driving light so that the center of the hot spot is 1 " below the mark you made in the wall.
While there is little variation in the beam pattern, driving lights come in a number of different styles that are optimized for specific driving conditions
Fog Lights or Fog Lamps
The only effective way to drive through dense fog is to angle the light downward onto the road, so that it avoids running right into the reflective water droplets. Typically, fog hovers about 12"–18" above the road's surface. Fog lights mount low on your front bumper, and cast a wide beam of light down onto the road. That way, the light gets lower than the fog, and you're able to see clearer and drive safer. What's more, in order to keep the light from extending above the level of your bumper, the beams of light are cut off at the top (imagine an Oreo cookie that's been divided in half).
How your fog lights are aimed is extremely important. If they're angled too high, their light will just shoot right up into the mist—not to mention right into the eyes of oncoming motorists. If they're angled too low, then their range is greatly reduced, and you won't be able to see far enough ahead. Thankfully, the Society of Automotive Engineers (S.A.E.) has taken the guess work out of aiming fog lights by developing a standard system. Here's how it works:
Mount the fog lights on the front of your vehicle between 10"–14" up from the ground. Park your vehicle 25' away from a flat wall, like a garage door or the side of a building. You'll want to make sure that the ground is level so that the results are accurate.
Measure the height from the center of the lamp to the ground. Use that same measurement to draw a line on the wall with some chalk.
Turn on the fog lights, and take a look at where the light hits on the wall. The tops of the beams should be 4" below the line you drew.
A properly aimed set of fog lights not only gives you better visibility, it's also good roadway etiquette. Misaligned fog lights can shoot right into the eyes of oncoming drivers, and no one wants blinded motorist on the road, especially on stormy nights.
NOTE: Fog lamps can be of any single color. Usually Yellow is being used
