[OT] Stickers on headlights ?

Hi there,

Certainly a bit OT here, but I'm curious...
I often see, here in France, UK cars, with RHD and so on (no problem). They
often have a kind of triangle-shaped stickers on the front lights. My
question is : what are they intented for ? I noticed that not all UK cars I
see down here have them.

 

If you take your UK car to a European country you must use 'headlight
re-director stickers'. Because over here we drive on the left, lights
are beamed more towards oncoming traffic on the right. Whereas in
Europe where most drive on the right, without the re-direct stickers the
lights would beam to the right and not towards oncoming traffic. So the
re-direct stickers help to direct the light to the left - at oncoming
traffic.

Its just one of those many regulations, like you must have a country
sticker on the rear of your car to show where you're from!

Cheers
Chris.

 

plus its cheaper than fitting french standard headlights for your trip
abroad and then changing them back on your return
p.s GT you'll have to fit them if you ever visit this shit hole i live in
jeff

 

Other way round, surely? I thought lights shone _away_ from oncoming
traffic to prevent dazzling other drivers and to illuminate the
pavement.

 

D'oh! Of course! Sorry, my mistake!

Anyway, heres all the information you could need:

Headlight Beam Deflectors. With a UK based car the headlights dip
towards the kerb, as you will be travelling on the right hand side of
the road the lights would dip towards on-coming traffic. For this reason
you must either block the part of the beam that dips or fit small lenses
that actually deflect it towards the right hand kerb. My Headlamp
Conversion Simplified page describes the reason and solution for this.

http://www.aer-net.co.uk/edr/headlampsnf.htm

Cheers

 

Hello,

OK. Thanks !

True it should be the case, but with EU plates, now you've got it on your
plate. It doesn't seem to be the case in UK, though.

 

In the UK we are told that the GB on an EU plate is not acceptable in the EU
and that the black on white oval form must be displayed.

Bob

 

My experience as a resident of france is that nobody but us brits take these
regulations seriously. The italian and spanish plates i regularly see here
rarely display any indication to the non-expert what country they're from.
The french will patriotically display an "F" on a tiny silver plastic cutout
map of the hexagon - but thats usually all you get. In any case, the british
motorist abroad in latin countries is immediately noticable, if not due to
having right hand drive, then for our curious driving behaviour, such as
stopping for pedestrians on a crossing, at traffic lights, never using the
horn as one should (use of the klaxon is an art form). That huge GB sticker
is, in Nice at any rate, just an invitation for everybody to overtake you on
the pavement. Oh, and as for stickers on headlights, you might as well join
a significant minority who side-step the problem completely by never using
them ....

 

It seems they changed the guidelines, since nobody had those stickers
anyway. Apart from the people going to Austria, but that's a completely
different story.

cu,
Dirk

 

Hi Jeff,

(Of course).

Well, my headlights are so badly trimmed (yes, I should have another try)
that I'm not sure I'd need them