Do Fog Lights actually work?

[FiliJohn]

White fog lights makes the visibility worse. You need yellow or amber lights.

[kyleburns]

Fog lights are not designed to see through fog. They are designed to better light up the ground directly in front of your car so you can see the lines in the road to use as a guide. That’s why the white line on the right side of the road is called the “fog line”.

[bd]

You need yellow or amber light for fog to cut through.

[zach]

When it’s super foggy and it’s near zero visibility, turning off the headlights and running with just fog lights (Amber) allows me to continue driving over the fog socked mountains along the Pacific Northwest Coast. It might take me a couple hours to get home, however, while other drivers are stuck on the side of the road, I’m at home comfortably sleeping in my bed .

[AG-.]

You need yellow and to shut off the main lights, US law makes all manufactures keep the headlights on when fogs are on which defeats the point

[aleksandrnestrato]

Fog lights do help, it’s obvious, there’s no need to test them.
However there’s a huge mistake everybody seems to be doing in this vid: When it’s foggy *switch off* your main lights if you have the fog ones. Main lights (low beams and especially high beams) emit way too bright and too tall beam that reflexes from the water droplets of the fog and you get a wall of light before you.

Fog lights have flat, wide and a-not-so-bright beam, they emit light _underneath_ the fog where it floats above the surface of the road.

So during fog turn on your fog lights and turn off your low beams (and God forbid high beams).

[HossLUK]

Fog lights from the manufacturers are usually only meant for other cars to see you better through the fog, by giving them more light to look at and to be able to see more points of your car, which will give the oncoming cars a much better indication of how big your car is without needing to directly see you first. It's akin to ships and the lights they use. Fog lights weren't really meant for you to see better in the fog or at night.

That being said, there are still cars that come with fog lights that function as both a marker light for oncoming traffic, as well as extra light output to go with your headlights. I think Audi has some of the best ones when it comes to extra light output. I believe they call them their weather lights. But, those lights are located inside the headlight housing, so they do not provide extra points of light on the car for other cars to see.

There are plenty of really great aftermarket options, though. Morimoto having the absolute best option with their 4 banger led fog lights. Those can directly replace your current fog lights, if your car is one of the models they can fit the lights in, and they act essentially as a second pair of headlights, but stretch out significantly wider than any headlights. Allowing you to see across any ditches or fields on either side of the road. They're also plenty bright to punch through some mild fog. But, just know that in dense fog, there's nothing that can just magically light the way through it. As fog is just water droplets, it will just reflect any light you shine on it, and if it's dense fog, it'll just make the light bounce around and all you'll see is just more fog and not much more of the road. And no, the color does not matter either. I think people say that just because the closer to infra-red the wavelength of light is, the further it can travel through dust and gas. But, as we can't see infra-red, it doesn't make a difference to our eyes.

[pootmahgoots]

YOu turn your headlights off and run your fog lights so that you can see the ground and follow the white line on the shoulder.

[ashishjangra]

Btw its not for visibility but for others can see your low height lights through fog and can judge a vehicle is coming from front. Fog lights can be white or yellow and should be placed at lower height where fog is less near ground

[dawfurby]

Clear lens, with a yellow or amber LED bulb in the fog light housing. That’s how I have seen it look aesthetically pleasing while doing the most in a foggy situation.

[MrJamesp]

Fog lights help, especially if they are amber or yellow. Yellow and amber have a different wavelength that doesn't reflect as bad in fog. Sadly people confuse driving lights with fog lights. Fog lights are aimed very low and wide vs a higher narrow beam on the driving lights.

[johnnation]

Yep i was going to say go amber if ur cheap use vinyl amber stick on cover

[ColinMill]

The important thing about fog lights is that they are mounted low so as to maximise the angle between your eyeline and the line of the beam. this minimises the amount of back-scattered light that you are looking through (both by reducing the length of the beam looked through and by avoiding the peak back-scatter direction which is straight back)

[AshyAki]

I’ve never seen a white foglamp..
I’d recommend using yellow mostly (amber works too) because white just makes the fog worse by reflecting off of it and yellow lights just cut through.

[bluecollarmage]

Some vehicles can use just the fog lights if you want. I can on my '96 C280. I haven't needed that often, but sometimes the fog is so dense any normal headlights worsens vision.

[jeremyh.pritchard]

Front fog lights are designed to see the close-in, side of road edges better, than using the low-beam headlights alone.

Front fog lights OUTSIDE America and Canada, are wired to also operate on park, then low and high-beam.

We teach here, that under *severe* visibility conditions, that you drive with just the cars park (sidelights) and front fog lights ON. This action reduces the glare caused even by low-beam headlights, AND additionally, allows the front indicators to stand out more clearly to lead traffic, as headlights can often mask those front indicators.

Here, your SPEED *must* be reduced, that speed may be as slow as merely idling along, or less than 50kmh, use your speedometer to judge. Do NOT outdrive your forward vision.

For the US, simply stick to their use in conjunction with low-beam headlights under poor visibility, as mentioned above, since that market doesn't operate the function - as does the rest of Earth.

When visibility is so poor, your cars REAR FOG LIGHT should be ON, its better than being slammed from behind! This lamp function, offers up to twenty times the luminous intensity over your cars regular taillights. Therefore; You MUST switch OFF the rear fog lamp the moment you can see well enough ahead.

Do not use a rear fog light simply because of a slight mist, but do use them in dust storms, in wildfire smoke conditions, in torrential daytime rain on freeways or highways, or on dusty gravel roads. The worse the visibility, the better the function serves you.

The function is oddly optional in the US, but the US Recommended Practice is SAE J1319. The global design rule is UNECE 38.

The use of hazard-warning lights, in effect as defacto rear fog lights, is contrary to international law, held in The UN Road Traffic Conventions & Amendments to date, where the function is reserved for use at vehicle breakdowns and crash scenes.

Spectrum note; it is true that "yellow light" (selective yellow), may be perceived to be softer to the eye, but such lamp can have up to 15% less luminous intensity, compared to a white-optic version of the same lamp, hence the move to white-optic front fog lights. Not hard regardless, to utilise a selective yellow bulb, often marketed as "all weather" bulbs, if you personally prefer. The bulb you use, must bear conformity markings (for compliance), usually stamped on the steel body. Do not increase wattage, in heavy fog, you seek less glare, not more.

[bluegun]

Fog lights are just designed to provide additional lighting that doesn't reflect off the fog. If you bought some kinda high lumen LED type of thing don't expect to get good results. There's a reason the old halogen fogs back in the day weren't super bright and were usually tinted amber, orange or yellow. They didn't need to be tinted if the bulb wasn't too bright cuz the light projected was generally in the 3000-3500 Kelvin range. Most modern LED's are too bright anyway but they also hover in the 6500-8000K range which happens to reflect light off the fog and back towards the driver much more harshly than a standard 55w halogen bulb. It's why you aren't supposed to use your brights in fog either.

[Dragoneer]

They’re not to help you see, they’re to help others see you

[anthonyoer]

I don't call them fog lights...
They're more pot hole lights.

[charlesgreer]

Fog lights are yellow, and driving lights are clear like headlights. The yellow light from actual fog lights cuts through the fog, and white light creates almost a glare, so usually you can see more clear with lights on dim in fog.