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Standing Lights Question

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tony barnhill

tony barnhill

Great Pumpkin - R.I.P
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Several of my European cars (Mercedes, VW, BMW, Jaguar) had a place on the light switch where you could turn on just the front park light & rear tail light for one side - either the lefts or the rights - depending on which side of the car was nearest to the roadside...that way, when you parked, you could walk away with those 2 lights burning to allow motorists to see that your car was 'standing' by the road.

Does anybody know if that was ever done on the home & Euro MG's?
 
I don't believe so....at least not on the MGB and modern Midgets.
 
Pretty cool feature, though. Maybe I'll add it to mine!
 
[ QUOTE ]
You could use the blinkers. You'd have to wire them independant of the ignition switch of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then nice guys like me would be stopping all day to let you out, thinking you were signalling to pull out onto the road! Or else blowing the horn so you don't pull out in front of them /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devilgrin.gif

Bruce /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cheers.gif
 
I found this.......

223: All vehicles MUST display parking lights when parked on a road or a lay-by on a road with a speed limit greater than 30 mph.
Law RVLR reg 24

https://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Lqio...t=clnk&cd=5

The Elva came with small front lights beside the turn signal indicators.
I have been told that they were low energy consuming, parking lights required in Europe. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif (Attachment)
 

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Bruce - they don't blink - they stay on all the time the switch is turned to them....so, you'd not think the guy was trying to get out into traffic.

hmmmmm....or this one:

quote]225: Parking in fog. It is especially dangerous to park on the road in fog. If it is unavoidable, leave your parking lights or sidelights on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where are our British members?
 
Tony, I don't know about MGs ever having that feature, but my '04 Mini does.

Someone once mentioned that the reason my '69 B has the little switch on the steering cowl to turn off the dash lights was so there would be less drain when parking and leaving the parking lights on. That suggests to me that the "single-sided" feature was never on MGs, else the wiring and switch would probably be present on export models as well.... No guarantees, of course, but I also don't think I've ever seen it mentioned anywhere (Clausager, etc...)

HTH!
 
The idea of leaving just one light visable from the rear seems dumb to me. Without the second tail light you have no way of knowing which side the rest of the car is on. Ever meet a one eyed car in the fog and had no way of knowing which side of the car the light is on? If the light is on the passenger side and you think it is the driver's side there may be a collision because you get lured to the left side of your lane
 
I think this was a fairly standard feature on a lot of European (especially German built)cars in the late fifites and sixties.

Don't know if the British adapted this or not.

As far as safety is concerned...it's all what you are accustomed to having used. In this case, I think folks would know that a single light on the side of the road would mean a car is parked along side.
 
Yup -- I think the law was that a parked car must be illuminated on the side away from the curb. It makes sense too -- if there was a row of parked cars, the light on the side nearest the curb would be obscured by the car behind...
 
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