Fog light not turning on

[hmibennett]

Yes, I think that's what I've been used to. I think I was so spooked by the rapidly deteriorating visibility combined with the knowledge that that fog lamp button is a bugger to press that I completely missed the obvious first thing to do. With the lights being on auto I don't usually have to touch them and I hadn't clocked that it wasn't dark enough for them to have come on. (It was literally about midday.) I've never met a car before where the fog light control was so completely divorced from the rest of the lighting system, and I just went straight for the fog light.

I remember in my Golf the dial was somewhere around my right knee and it had to be turned away from the auto-lighting setting and pulled out to get it to the fog lamp position. Half the time I rotated it the wrong way and plunged the entire car into darkness. But obviously once the right setting was found, dipped headlights and tail lights were also on.

When I picked up my Peugeot from new I took off straight up the motorway to somewhere in the Midlands for the weekend. Half way there I realised a lit icon on the dashboard had to be the fog lamp, but I had no idea how to get it to go off. I was back home before I sussed it. Amazingly, nobody drove up my tail and flashed me the entire journey, there or back. (It wasn't the only adventure with that car on its first day out either.)

As an aside - but relevant here I think - the degree of 'darkness' necessary to trigger lights on when in the auto setting does seem a bit hit and miss. I quite often have to switch my lights on manually when (quite rightly, given the conditions) most other vehicles are already illuminated, while going under a fairly short overbridge in full daylight triggers the automatic lights! Having said that, the auto lights are much quickly to turn off when conditions are right than was the case with my previous Kia.

 

[ReintjeWA]

As an aside - but relevant here I think - the degree of 'darkness' necessary to trigger lights on when in the auto setting does seem a bit hit and miss. I quite often have to switch my lights on manually when (quite rightly, given the conditions) most other vehicles are already illuminated, while going under a fairly short overbridge in full daylight triggers the automatic lights! Having said that, the auto lights are much quickly to turn off when conditions are right than was the case with my previous Kia.

Yeah I agree, any little overpass and the lights come on and stay on for bit, same when I park underneath the carport at home. But when I enter one of the few tunnels here in Western Australia it feels like it takes ages before the lights come on.

 

[NickHeynes]

Absolutely. Actually my Golf's fog light was awkward to get on. It was on the dial that controlled which setting the lights were on, and it wasn't intuitive to find the fog light setting. More than once I plunged the entire car into darkness trying to get them on. Needs to be easy to do. If you suddenly hit bad visibility you don't want to fiddle around.

I remember those now, you had to turn the headlights on then pull the rotary knob to get the fog lights to turn on.If I remember rightly you had to pull and turn it to turn the front fog lights on as well . It was a pain

 

[Rolfe]

I remember those now, you had to turn the headlights on then pull the rotary knob to get the fog lights to turn on.If I remember rightly you had to pull and turn it to turn the front fog lights on as well . It was a pain

That's the one!

 

[Rolfe]

As an aside - but relevant here I think - the degree of 'darkness' necessary to trigger lights on when in the auto setting does seem a bit hit and miss. I quite often have to switch my lights on manually when (quite rightly, given the conditions) most other vehicles are already illuminated, while going under a fairly short overbridge in full daylight triggers the automatic lights! Having said that, the auto lights are much quickly to turn off when conditions are right than was the case with my previous Kia.

I've got a non-standard sensor cover that stops the lights coming on too soon (still come on under bridges sometimes though) but it genuinely wasn't dark despite the deluge. It was close to noon. The issue was the huge amount of spray being thrown up by everyone's tyres.