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NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Parts: Replacing 30 Year-Old Lights with LEDs

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Brian
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
While you're at it NHTSA, can you please mandate that F-tards who insist on driving around with the fog lights on when it is crystal clear night be kicked in the nards??? To me, doing this is like screaming, "I'm a giant douche!" at the top of one's lungs.
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MushyHeirloom
07/02/09

@Brian B: In some places, this is illegal. A friend of my mother's got pulled over in Connecticut because her Outback's fogs came on, for some reason, with her headlights.
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mzs
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Cool we're half way to where we should be. Now how much longer until until we get one white backing light and one red fog light?

About 8 years ago I saw something pretty neat in California. There was this VW new beetle that had a LED center brake light. At the beginning of braking it would flash a few times rapidly and then go solid bright red. VW electrical gremlin or German automaker genius, I never found-out?
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Das ASHloch (achtundsiebzig)
07/02/09

@mzs: About 5 years ago, many new Hondas and Mazdas I saw had the flashing center brake light. I don't know if it was a dealer-installed fad, but it got people's attention.

Only two marques I've ever seen it on.
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Alfisted
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
So all new panel vans will come with amber alerts pre-installed? That should be a real time saver.
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SirNotAppearing
07/02/09

@CPO Alfisted: You win.
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Boosted Lego Wagon
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
I don't see how this can be true. After all, it's mostly european cars that have amber turn signals. BMWs don't use theirs, Volkswagens have theirs fail due to electrical faults, and Mercedes use theirs to fake out drivers and then invade Poland.
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Das ASHloch (achtundsiebzig)
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Also, amber signal != amber lens

My car's taillights are red overall, but they house red, amber, and white lights within them.

Same thing with clear front markers--you can get bulbs that are silver on the outside, but flash amber (Osram/Sylvania Diadem comes to mind)
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maximum-sienna
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals

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maximum-sienna
07/02/09

@maximum-sienna: Collapsing comment fail.
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CaptMatt15 loves the Zoom-Zoom
07/02/09

@maximum-sienna: This is priceless, good find!
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maximum-sienna
07/02/09

@CaptMatt15 is high on 9000 rpm: Find? Find? This is no find. I have Dilbert read it online everyday for the past 4 years of my engineering life. This bad boy has been on my wall since May of last year. It just so happens that the date is on each strip, so if I ever seen one that's appropiate for Jalopnik, I just enter the date into the Dilbert search and embed the strip.

If you like this strip, you should see the other 30+ ones that are wall worthy. Here's one that is directly applicable to my situation (admittedly, it's nto as funny, but since I live it everyday, it's priceless):

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leavethegun-takethecannoli
07/02/09

@maximum-sienna: Awesome.
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Ben Wojdyla
07/02/09

@maximum-sienna: Two monitors really does make you feel like a big whig. Nothing like comparing information in a database against the latest spreadsheet update without having to Alt-Tab.
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MushyHeirloom
07/02/09

@Ben Wojdyla: My dual 21" CRTs agree. I don't use the secondary (left) one for much, usually, but it comes in handy when I need it...
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ptschett
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
I wonder if they factored in burnt-out brake lights? Every day I see cars that have separate rear turn signals and that only have the CHMSL left working. My theory is that these drivers are expecting the super-fast/super-slow blinker speed that indicates the combined brake/turn light is burnt out, and can't be bothered to maintain their cars till they burn all the brake lights out and get rear-ended.
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MushyHeirloom
07/02/09

@ptschett can't drive 55: I had a brake light intermittently out in my Volvo (loose bulb contact spring) and damn it, the indicator light let me know about it until it was fixed.
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FlakJack
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
"A separate study found NHTSA just got 5.3% more anal."

So you're saying their significant others enthusiastically approved of this decision?
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rickerbr
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Once again, scrap the 1920s US lighting laws, do as the Europeans do and be done with it. FWIW I've got European spec OE Led tail lights on my GTI like what the Passats here get standard, except that the turns are amber...
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Tyson
07/02/09

@rickerbr: The lighting laws are actually updated fairly often. The big difference between US and Europe has to do with the glare lights are allowed to cause for other vehicles. I can't even remember who has which laws, but one set of laws is designed to have as little glare as possible from lights, the other is designed to have the best forward vision (with headlights) and best visibility.
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Paul Y. don't drive too fast.
07/02/09

@Tyson: Well, it can't be the US enforcing visibility, because most cars have absolutely worthless headlights. I'd be in trouble if my xB wasn't ordered with fogs, since I live in the woods. My headlights just plain suck.

I particularly miss the headlights I had on the Impreza I previously had-- they were super bright and had a good pattern, AND the low beams stayed on when the high beams came on. If you came at me at night around a bend, your eyes would MELT.
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leavethegun-takethecannoli
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Relax guys.

It's just a rumor. I heard that the government is cutting funding to the NHTSA and soon they won't around to enforce this.

Yeah right, but we could hope.
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Maymar
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Fantastic, orange is so much safer when not used than red.
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ThreeLitre
07/02/09

@Maymar is (insert recent meme here): For more useful would be to mandate that all vehicles be equipped with ability to shock passengers if the wheel is turned pass a certain angle without the turn signal being engaged.
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kagekiri
07/02/09

@ThreeLitre: Yeah, until you're going up a 2 lane road up a curvy mountain, and get shocked every few meters because you didn't signal. As much as I hate people that don't signal, it's probably a bad idea to do that.
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MushyHeirloom
07/02/09

@kagekiri: That, and it wouldn't work when people are merging two feet in front of you, without signalling, on the freeway.
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combat chuck
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Here in Orlando, this is irrelevant, as no one uses their turn signals anyway.
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If FromaBuick6 has to watch one more Chevy commercial, he's going to punch Howie Long in the face
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
That's a petty, lame ass statistic. However, I'm not bothered by amber turn signals and they often make the tail lights look better.

If nothing else, it'll force the domestics to finally stop putting cheap ass, single-bulb tail lights on cars.
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Plecostomus [Tyrrell]
07/02/09

@FromaBuick6: Multi-bulb taillamps are great because 90% of people either don't know or care they have bulbs out.
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Jeb_Hoge
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
Call me crazy, but I like the amber. If I ever got a 1st gen Focus hatch, I had plans to replace the US-spec tails with Euro tails (which had an amber element) and the bumper with a Euro bumper (which has the backup lamps). Properly done, amber lenses to me are like jewelry. They're nice accents.
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Plecostomus [Tyrrell]
07/02/09

@Jeb_Hoge: They are, I've seen it done (some 1st gen focus I spotted in Cypress, CA) and it looks fantastic. It pisses me off that Ford didn't sell it that way here.
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Jo Schmo
07/02/09

In reply to NHTSA May Force All-Orange Turn Signals
What a joke. You want to prevent more crashes? Make all brake-lights LED so you can actually tell when the the schmutz in the beat up old Thunderbird in front of you is slowing down.
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