Question: what is the most useless private vehicle accessory in the Philippines?
If you ask me that question, my answer would be fog lights because of the simple reason that despite having no fog in this country, many car and motorcycle owners out there somehow inexplicably think that dropping some of their hard earned money on aftermarket and poorly-installed fog lights make them look cool.
It is difficult to understand why people in this country love to turn on those fog lights that, if installed properly, are essentially useless from the driver’s point of view when there is no fog. Because by definition, a FOG light should be used only when there is fog because it helps improve visibility. When there is no fog, then it is essentially useless, isn’t it?
But since a lot of Filipino drivers and car owners choose ignorance when it comes to the proper use of their vehicle, fog light use has become basically commonplace because they probably heard somewhere that it is cool to turn on. I don’t know where they got that, probably from the same school of thought that told them to turn on their hazard lights during heavy rain, or those people who told them that flashing high beams is the way to signal to an incoming vehicle that you intend to be bastos and refuse to yield in this country, when the gesture actually means the exact opposite in the rest of the civilized and educated world.
Anyway, the thing about fog light use is that in an ideal world, it would be generally harmless, as aside from being an indication of ignorance, it shouldn’t really harm anybody.
However, just being ignorant isn’t enough for most people, they have to be ignorantly cool, and it is when these chumps get aftermarket fog lights that are improperly installed because aside from being too bright, it is pointed upwards toward incoming vehicles instead of downwards towards the road, blinding oncoming drivers and creating road hazards for everyone in their path, that ignorance turns hazardous. This is felt by the rest of us when it starts to get dark and those special class of cool car owners turn on their useless demon lights.
Special mention goes to the car owners who need to compensate for something small by making theirs as big or as high as they can, which I really don’t mind because whatever people advertise to the world is totally their own business. But when their fog lights, which shouldn’t be turned on in the first place because there is no fog, end up pointing into our eyes because of the hideous combination of their lifted suspension and fancy aftermarket lights, I tend to make judgments – not on the size of their dicks, but that of their brains.
To that subset of car owners: If you can afford to get a lift kit, that killer metal bumper, and fancy fog lights among your array of other extra lights that you shouldn’t use 99.5 percent of the time, can you at least get an installer who knows how to install, align, and calibrate properly? Or did we peasants just miss the memo that being a dick is the whole point of the exercise?
Vehicles with hazardous lights, or lacking the proper lights, is a perennial problem on our roads. Government bothers over it rarely, making a big show of making apprehensions (during the day time, mind you) for just a few days, every few years, just to remind us that they are not totally useless on that end, but if you come to think of it, it is mostly up to us to either have consideration for others and self-police ourselves.
For that to happen, the solution is very simple when it comes to fog lights: don’t turn them on unless it is fogging, or raining so heavily that visibility is reduced. It’s that simple, my dear friends. For those who want to install aftermarket fog lights because it’s cool, let me assure you… it’s not. Save us the hassle of having to deal with another night time road hazard and spend your money elsewhere instead please.
This piece is all about fog lights for now, because although the misuse of other lights, especially the high beam and hazard lights, and even the blinding emergency vehicle lights being used by many LGUs, is also another societal and road safety problem that the LTO should tackle once it solves the basic problem of providing plastic drivers licenses and simple stamped metal license plates. Since they are still busy with those simple matters, we can probably save that discussion for another article.
So, once again, let me remind everyone who has fog lights on their cars: do not turn it on unless it is needed, and for the love of all that is good in this world, please do not install aftermarket ones that end up blinding everyone else.*
