In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

, lighting-up time is a legally-enforced period from half an hour after

sunset Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spr ...

to half an hour before

sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology A ...

, during which all

motor vehicle A motor vehicle, also known as motorized vehicle or automotive vehicle, is a self-propelled land vehicle, commonly wheeled, that does not operate on rails (such as trains or trams) and is used for the transportation of people or cargo. The ...

s on unlit

public roads A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

(except if parked) must use their headlights.

History

Lighting-up time was first introduced in the nineteenth century in local

by-law A by-law (bye-law, by(e)law, by(e) law), or as it is most commonly known in the United States bylaws, is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authori ...

s and enforced nationally by the Lights on Vehicles Act 1907. In the 1920s, service stations started displaying cardboard clock-face displays, set to the lighting-up time for the day. The Road Lighting Act 1942 stipulated 1 hour after sunset/before

. It was amended to 30 minutes by the Road Traffic Act 1956 because of the increasing speed of traffic. These were the required times for showing all lights on all vehicles, including

bicycles A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bi ...

and horse-drawn carts, hence the name ''lighting-up time''. The current Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989 tightened the requirements further. Lighting-up time is retained as the required period for use of motor vehicle headlights on roads without lit streetlights, but with that exception, all vehicles must now keep conspicuity lights lit during the longer period of sunset to sunrise (unless parked, in a designated parking place and facing the same way as adjacent traffic and more than from the nearest junction on a road with a speed limit not exceeding Note: This exemption only applies for "a motor vehicle being a goods vehicle the unladen weight of which does not exceed 1525 kg;".s. 24 of The Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989 and the Highway Code). The conspicuity lights required are "front and rear position lamps" (side and tail lights) plus, for large vehicles, side marker lamps and end-outline marker lamps and, for motor vehicles, rear number plate lights. Different rules apply to bicycles; RVLR states that "Lights (and reflectors) are required on a pedal cycle only between sunset and sunrise. Lights (and reflectors) are not required when the cycle is stationary or being pushed along the roadside. When they are required, the lights and reflectors listed below must be clean and working properly." Headlights are also required at other times when visibility is restricted, e.g. by

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...

, rain, snow, overcast sky or smoke. They should also be used in

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

s. Streetlights are usually set to come on automatically near the beginning of lighting-up time, although modern lamps monitor the light level and turn on when this gets too low, and so are influenced by weather. They may also be set to switch off automatically when road usage is reduced, often at midnight, although currently most stay on until about the end of lighting-up time. Sunrise and sunset are defined by the Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations as local sunrise and sunset so the times are different in different parts of the UK; they are earlier in the east and later in the west, and vary more with the seasons in northerly locations than in southerly locations. Lighting-up times were formerly commonly displayed in national and local newspapers in the UK and announced on national and local radio stations, but the widespread adoption of street lighting has rendered this largely redundant. As a result, most of the previous sources no longer provide them, but may still provide sunrise/sunset times.

References

General

Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations, 1989

Lighting-up time, sunrise/sunset and twilights
at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, United Kingdom

at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh * D. O'Leary, ''When to light up: a pocket treatise on the Lights on vehicles act, 1907 containing a full explanation of the act, with a table showing the lighting-up time'
Published 1908
* D. A. Schreuder, J. Kosterman, Adriana Morris ''Road Lighting for Safety'' Published by Thomas Telford, 1998
Page 231
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lighting-Up Time Traffic law Vehicle law Road safety Transport law in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References

General