Talk:Lighting-up time

Worldwide view
Most US states have similar laws - though they vary in what is required. Some states require that the lights are turned on before dusk, others require that they are turned on after dusk. P38fln (talk) 22:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)


 * But what do you call it in the US (or anywhere else in the world)? I have just googled lighting up time and the top 20 results are all from UK sites/authors.  It would be great to add a note at the beginning of the article, linking to articles for non-UK equivalents, under whatever names are used. Enginear (talk) 17:32, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Worldwide view? Of something that's pretty much restricted to the UK?  (At least, under this term.)  Maybe we should add a table listing all the other countries, and saying "not known here" for each of them.  What silliness to add such a tag to this article! T-bonham (talk) 23:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

So we ought to have a special article JUST for Britain every time they do something exactly the same way as the rest of the world, but decides to come up with a unique name for it? You know, like we have a separate article for "trunk" and for "boot", and one for "soccer" and one for "football". I see no reason this should be a standalone article, just because the UK came up with a name for it. In the US we call it "common sense traffic law". If someone had made an article about "road vehicle lighting laws" and someone tried to make this article second, people would say that it was stupid and pointless.AnnaGoFast (talk) 03:26, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

The page on lighting-up time is was very wrong.
The law in the U.K. says headlamps are required on vehicles in use between the period half an hour after local sunset and half an hour before local sunrise, the former being known as lighting up time. All vehicles (including bicycles) must display front and rear position lamps when in use between sunset and sunrise. Since I have not yet looked up the relevant legislation to be able to cite an appropriate source I shall not edit the page. [above comment left by User:87.194.130.127 on 25 Sep 09]

Yes, I agree. I have checked with (and linked to) the legislation, and updated the article.

The confusion was that, prior to 1989, no lights were required until lighting up time. The change was not well publicised (certainly, I only discovered it recently, due to reading the updated Highway Code in preparation for my daughter learning to drive) and I have never heard of it being enforced. It does seem of limited use, since side and rear lights are not very visible at dusk -- if they had changed the requirement to use headlights at sunset, that would have made a big difference, but sidelights less so.

I have left in the statement that RVLR1989 defines sunset and sunrise as local times, since it is supported by the National Maritime Museum page linked to in the references, but there is in fact no specific definition in the original regs. I don't know whether this too is a statement relating to an earlier Statutory Instrument, or whether there has been a minor revision since the 1989 regs (the government site I linked to warns that it does not update for revisions). Enginear (talk) 17:21, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

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