DADRL - Studies

Studies

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Increase in traffic collisions in Poland after 2007 introduction of mandatory DRLs

DRLs do nothing to help road fatalities (up 31%) and pedestrian fatalities (up 83.7%) in Poland.

Increasing Death Toll in Bulgaria After Mandatory DRLs

GM has greatly revised its estimate of DRL effectiveness

DADRL comment: According to GM DRLs have saved 423 lives over the past 10 years. Given that there are around 40,000-45,000 traffic fatalities in the United States each year [NHTSA], GM's new statement acknowledges that the effectiveness of DRLs in saving lives is about 0.1%. This is far lower than previous claims from GM and NHTSA. Furthermore, to make such a claim is to be completely ignorant of statistical significance. Assigning a 0.1% factor to a single safety device is simply not possible. GM also claims they "can reference more than 85,000 crashes of all types that never happened." Can the claims get anymore senseless? I can reference two crashes that didn't occur yesterday: my commute to and from work. It's pretty clear that GM is really grasping to try to keep DRLs alive. DRL effectiveness has not been proven and GM knows it!

UPDATE: April 19, 2007
Realizing that they published such rubbish on the Internet, GM decided to pull their claim of 423 lives saved over 10 years from the aforementioned webpage. Thanks for checking out our site, GM. Now, stop inflicting useless DRLs on the American public!!

DADRL's response to NHTSA's 2004 assessment of DRL effectiveness.

Stephen Prower, Research Officer of the British Motorcyclists Federation, thoroughly discredits NHTSA's assessment. 194kB PDF.
Paper sizes: US Letter -- A4.

Summary: DRL's are ineffective (no surprise).

DADRL's response to NHTSA's preliminary (2000) assessment of DRL effectiveness. PDF file, 72kB.

Stephen Prower's critique of NHTSA's preliminary assessment. PDF file, 12kB.

Summary: DRL's are ineffective (still no surprise).

Review of the evidence for motorcycle and motorcar daytime lights, Antonio Perlot, General Secretary, Federation of European Motorcyclists' Associations, and Stephen Prower, Research Officer, British Motorcyclists Federation. PDF file, 276kB. Also available as a Zipped Word Document.

Thirty Years on: Do motorcar daytime lights reduce accidents?
Stephen Prower, research officer for the British Motorcycle Federation, reviews several DRL monitoring studies. PDF file, 27kB.

Stephen Prower's critique (PDF, 8kB) of
Koornstra's DRL data analysis (PDF, 179 pages, 900kB).

Wisconsin DOT Says Daytime Headlights Don't Help
An $18,000 project promoting daytime headlight use on Highway 12 has failed to reduce crashes.

DADRL's response to a GM sponsored study claiming DRLs are effective. PDF file, 611kB.