Driving expert shares meaning of five commonly-used dashboard symbols
Motorists must keep road rules fresh in their minds, although it's common to lose touch with the finer points of driving theory as time passes.
Understanding dashboard signals is crucial for safe driving and communication on the roads. A TikTok user named Rebecca, boasting a 33,100 strong follower count, recently highlighted some often overlooked dashboard indicators, reports Nottinghamshire Live.
In her viral video, she clarifies: "What do lights mean? Now someone has asked me to run through what lights we have in the car and what they will do when we use them, so let's run through what we have."
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Rebecca starts with the dipped beam, essential for low visibility situations caused by darkness or adverse weather. She recommends: "Only use if your visibility is reduced but to no less than 100 metres ahead of you."
She then moves on to fog lights, which should be activated not only in fog but also in heavy rain. She advises: "Your visibility could be reduced also due to heavy rain so it's important you do use your fog lights if visibility has been reduced to less than 100 metres."
Lastly, she covers the full beam, vital for night driving to enhance road visibility. However, she cautions: "We then have our full beam and this is for when we're driving at night and it will give us so much better view of the road ahead.
"But we need to make sure we don't blind other road users so we will never use the full beam if we have other road users ahead of us."
After she outlined the importance of using parking lights, which are crucial when leaving your car on the side of the road at night or along streets where the traffic speed exceeds 30mph, she pointed out: "You would therefore turn on the side lights or known as parking lights,"
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She explained: "This is so your presence is known but you're not blinding people with your dipped beam." She went on to say: "We also have our hazard warning lights and these can be used for a variety of situations but when your vehicle is posing hazard to other road users."
Elaborating further, she added: "This may be that you've broken down on the side of the road and you need to pop your hazard lights on to warn others, it could even be when traffic is slowing down considering and you want to warn others of the extreme change of speed."
The video struck a chord with viewers as it racked up 800 likes and scores of comments. One viewer remarked: "Need to let about 50 percent of road users know about what you said about full beam."
Another chimed in with: "Surely you shouldn't be driving at night if you don't know what things are."
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