Using the right lighting is essential in fog.
Fog can be dangerous in traffic. Using the right lighting is essential in fog. The front fog lights may come on before the rear fog lights and dipped beams must be turned on manually.
Visibility of less than 200 meters is 'dense fog' and the view becomes obstructive to traffic. From this moment on, the fog lamps at the front may be switched on. On the highway, 200 meters means two hectometer signs (these are on the right along the road). Lampposts are on average about 75 meters apart in the Netherlands, so 2-3 lampposts is also a good measure.
The main fog lamp is the bright red taillight. This should only be used in very dense fog. This is the case if visibility is less than 50 meters. If the rear fog light is already used when you can see even further, this is a nuisance for other road users.
Pay attention to automatic lighting
Many modern cars have lights that turn on automatically when it gets dark. This does not work in fog. The sensor does not react to fog and usually finds it not 'dark enough' during fog during the day. It is therefore important to always switch on the dipped beam manually in fog and to switch on the correct fog lamps in dense or very dense fog.
Less than 50 meters wide-scale visibility exceptional
Very dense fog is not very common and is usually only local. But, for example, during the turn of the year from 2020 to 2021, there was very thick fog in Utrecht and South Holland on a large scale. Code orange applied to this. During the turn of the year from 2019 to 2020, very dense fog came on an even larger scale and a weather alarm was even in force in some provinces. Locally, in the northeast of the country, there was extremely poor visibility with visibility less than 10 meters.
