“Well here’s another question for you. Is it illegal to have a light on in the car when you’re driving in the dark? Well, if the light shines at your face, what happens? Well, your pupils go smaller because of the light and you can’t see stuff around you in a car. The same thing is happening if it’s dark around you, dark outside and there’s a bright light on, then your eyes are now haing a problem seeing anything outside there, in the dark, because of the light.
The other thing is that there’s a reflection in the car. If you’re in a dark car, with dark surroundings, dark outside, if you’ve got a light on, then you will see the reflection in the windows around you and those reflections are going to prevent you from seeing what’s outside in the dark effectively.
So it’s really, really not a good idea. You’ll therefore miss the ability to spot cyclists and pedestrians and other road users out there, so best advice is not to have any lights on at all. That might be other people sitting in the car with phones or or with screens of some sort or the light in the drop down sun-visor. That sort of light, any of those, we could do without them when you’re driving at night.
Having said that, at night time, and in the daytime, your speedometer and other instruments will be illuminated. They tend to be very bright during the day so that you can see them in daylight and they tend to be rather dim at night, because it’s not wanting to be too bright to be a distraction.
However, some do have an adjustment. You do have to adjust the lighting for the instruments at nighttime. You might have look into that.
You might have a sat-nav that’s on your phone on a bracket on the windscreen or you might have a sat-nav built into the car and it may be that that needs adjustment, something in the setting to tell it to dim the light, dim the brightness at nighttime.
You do not want to be driving around with a big, bright sat-nav screen for example in the dark and you can’t see out of the windows, so check the settings on those and, another point, aside from lights on in the car, just remember that having those lights on for your instruments at night does not mean your lights are on. Just because the speedometer and everything is lit up with lights, doesn’t mean the lights are on the car.
So check the switches, if it’s dark, you really need your dipped headlights on. If you’re parked ip, you might need your side lights on, but the instrument lights don’t mean anything apart from the lightbulbs are working.”
