Cornering Lights as a Driving Aid

[Revolefil]

Greetings to all from an Old Man. I found this forum while looking for information on adding cornering lights to my 2006 Toyota Highlander. The reason I am interested in cornering lights is simple: When making a left turn at an intersection at night, I have a difficult time seeing the roadway on the left. Specifically, the road I live on requires a left turn onto a street with a concrete median; one must stay to the right of said median or else hit it or swerve into oncoming traffic. I have hit it and narrowly avoided hitting it a few times.

Before anyone gets the idea that I'm too old to be driving, and if I can't see at night, etc., etc., I agree with you, but I can drive quite well, especially in daylight hours, but at night I have my challenges. So shall you. Age Happens.

The situation above is quite common where I live and many places I have lived, single lane or multi-lane roads divided by a median, and I'll bet my situation is not uncommon.

I haven't seen cornering lights on a car since my uncle's 1960-something Coup Deville, and I'm not about to buy a new car simply for cornering lights. I would like to find a simple "add-on" solution. I have added fog lights and driving lights to my Highlander for poor weather driving, and they work fine for the intended conditions. The idea of pointing my driver's side lights out to the left a little is interesting and I will road test that.

I have also considered adding a "bolt-on" solution to the left bumper, some form of flat beam LED, similar to the one NFT5 suggested in his post. I am a tad overwhelmed by the timer-power-interval switch complications, so at this point I think I'll leave it at pointing my left driving light or adding a left side driving light on a push-button switch. Should I progress and make any achievement, I'll report back.

Now, how about what to do when your hearing starts to go and you can't hear your turn blinker?! Ever wonder about all those "8-milers" out there driving with their turn signals on for miles at a time? I can tell you, sometimes you just can't hear the blinker. I know, I know, "The Old Man can't see, he can't hear, why's he driving??" Because I have to. And once again, Age Happens.

Thanks to all for their thoughtful and informative posts, please keep it up! Blessings.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

:welcome:

I have added fog lights and driving lights to my Highlander for poor weather driving, and they work fine for the intended conditions.

If the fog lamps are white they might also work as cornering lamps. Wire it so when the blinker is on, the lamp turns on on that side. However, we don't know what fog lamps you have. Real ones or Wal-Mart/J.C. Whitney toys?

The idea of pointing my driver's side lights out to the left a little is interesting and I will road test that.

Don't. Blinds other drivers and limits your seeing distance.

Now, how about what to do when your hearing starts to go and you can't hear your turn blinker?! Ever wonder about all those "8-milers" out there driving with their turn signals on for miles at a time? I can tell you, sometimes you just can't hear the blinker.

A simple matter to add a buzzer/chime. They might even sell extra-loud flasher units.

 

[kingofwylietx]

Some of the 1989 Ford Thunderbirds came from the factory with cornering/turning lights that were activated by the blinker. Perhaps you could source one from old new stock somewhere. I'm not sore of the newest vehicle to offer that lighting option.
If permissible, and I don't know if it is, you may be able to add one to the driver side facia of your bumper cover. From my experience, as long as there isn't a bumper or structure there, that tends to be a fairly empty area inside.

You can source electronic relays that have programmable timers that would be activated by your turn signal.

If you rarely drive at night and rarely encounter this type of situation, there is another, though less desirable option. Drive past the left turn to a well lit area where you can safely turn left into a parking lot....then turn around in the parking lot, exit the parking lot turning right....and then turn right onto the street you initially wanted to use.

 

[-Virgil-]

Yours is a legitimate need.

The question of what lamp to pick is important. The defining features of a cornering lamp's beam are as follows:

Not more than 125 candela from 10 to 90 degrees U (=up from horizontal)

Not more than 200 candela at 4 degrees U

Not more than 300 candela at 2U

Not more than 400 candela at 1U

Not more than 500 candela at H (horizontal, straight out)

At least 500 candela 45° R (to the right of Vertical) and at least 300 candela 30° and 60° Right, 2.5° Down
[that's for the right-side cornering light -- same angles but Left for the left-side light]

These specs consider "H" Horizontal to be the horizon of the lamp itself, and "V" Vertical to be the line crossing that horizon directly in front of the optical center of the lamp.

This notion of angling front lights outward is mostly not a good one, but in modified form it could potentially be used to address what you're trying to do. Overall there is one -- and only one -- correct aim setting for the headlamps and fog lamps (you don't have driving lights, which are auxiliary high beams), and any other setting is going to worsen their safety performance in one or more ways. Anyway, there is no horizontal aim adjustability on your headlamps and almost certainly none on your fog lamps, either.

But if you were to delete the fog lamps as such and repurpose one or both of them as cornering lamps, that could be a concept if you can figure out a way to re-mount the fog lamps so they are rotated 45 degrees outward from their normal position, and still either allow you to adjust the lamps' vertical aim or have the vertical aim fixed in a correct position.
I'm not having an easy time imagining how this might be readily achievable, though, so let's assume you'll be adding additional lights.

You can achieve this kind of light distribution with a lamp designed specifically as a cornering lamp, as long as it's mounted at the intended angles; if not the light won't go where it's supposed to. You can also achieve this with a carefully-chosen fog lamp mounted with a great deal of wall-eye (toe-out), about 45° worth, or you can put it on the opposite side of the front of the car, and cross-eye it 45° over across the car's centerline to the other side. Either way works, which to pick is a question of what's easiest/cleanest on any given car -- like one method or the other might make the lamps harder to damage in parking lot mishaps, etc.

Now that still leaves the question of what lamps to pick. How do you plan on mounting them to your Highlander, and where? Off hand, not knowing how or where you plan to mount the lamp, something like this would be pretty close to ideal, performance-wise, if you could mount it appropriately. It's a low-power fog lamp that takes a 27w halogen bulb, well sealed against water entry, all plastic construction for good impact resistance and low weight. It's no damn good as a fog lamp, far too weak, but with correct aim angle it very easily meets those cornering light specs, with about triple the minimum requirements at the seeing-light angles and adequate glare control in the glare zones (with max permissible intensities).

Whichever lamp you pick, you really should wire it up properly as described here. Manual switching is not a good idea; you will forget to turn it off in nothing but a matter of time, and while the photometrics will prevent severe glare, it's still not cool (or wise) to be driving around with it lit all the time.

You will want to pay close attention to your headlamps, which are probably in suboptimal to very-suboptimal condition in one or more respects. Make sure they're genuine parts (real Toyota parts made by Koito or NAL) and not aftermarket junk, and make sure the lenses are as clear as a new, clean window. Install thoughtfully-selected bulbs (these in the low beams and these in the high beams, with bases trimmed as per this diagram) and see to it the headlamps and fog lamps are carefully and correctly aimed with an aiming machine.

 

[N8N]

No real advice on what products to use, but my 2009 BMW 335i coupe actually has cornering lights - the inner "headlights" are not headlights at all but halogen lights that are aimed sharply toward the side. They are really nice actually.

Once you pick the product, hopefully you can intercept the wiring coming out of the turn signal switch and use that to trigger relays to turn on your cornering lamps. If you wanted to get trick you could add another relay to only enable this feature when the parking lamps are on (and so presumably the headlights).

I used to do this kind of stuff all the time but for headlights, but when I acquired my latest vehicle, drop-in LED headlamp assemblies were by that time reasonably good and available so I took the easy way out

 

[PhotonWrangler]

...why's he driving??" Because I have to. And once again, Age Happens.

Revolefil, just a thought about night vision: mine was getting into the "sub optimal" range so I went to the opthamologist and found that I had the beginnings of cataracts. I've had cataract surgery in both eyes over the last 18 months and it's improved my night vision (and overall color perception) quite a bit. Just something to consider looking into.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

When I had my surgery for cataracts and intraocular lenses, I found color perception also changed. Because they do one eye at a time, there was a period where I could look through one eye then the other, and see a different color intensity. I think it just returned my vision to what it had been 40 years earlier.

The dazzling halo effect around lights and reflective signs will gradually diminish over time, but it does make one more aware of glare (and annoyed by all those clumsy HID AND LED "conversions).

I had a very close call many years ago, while driving my Saab 99 Turbo in a poorly lighted residential part of Seattle's University District (land of crazed pedestrians). I honestly don't know whether to give more credit to the cornering lights or to the fact I had my clear Cibie 175 fog lights on, but it was close. I stopped at an unlighted, uncontrolled intersection, turned on my right signal, put it in first and was beginning to let out the clutch, when without slowing, a female in a black leotard jogged off of the right curb and directly in front of me. Eliminating people this stupid (before they reproduce) could be considered improving the species as a whole, but she would have messed up the car.

Needless to say, I like lights that let me see to the side. When my 175 fogs became sandblasted and somewhat worn, I replaced them on the car and mounted the older ones on my old International 4x4 as "see around the bend" lights when crawling around in the woods at night. Because I sometimes am in my woodlot at night, I'm planning to mount side floods on my current working truck.

Good luck with both your vision and your side lighting.

 

[Revolefil]

Revolefil, just a thought about night vision: mine was getting into the "sub optimal" range so I went to the opthamologist and found that I had the beginnings of cataracts. I've had cataract surgery in both eyes over the last 18 months and it's improved my night vision (and overall color perception) quite a bit. Just something to consider looking into.

Way ahead of you, had cataracts in BOTH eyes many years ago and had them removed. Oncoming light doesn't bother me as much as anyone else, okay as long as it's not a high beam! I'll give you a specific example of what I'm taking about: where I live there are many divided roadways, usually divided by a concrete divider. There's one on my home corner, and even though I know it's there, I can't see it when making a left-hand turn onto that street. Fog lights help somewhat. I got the idea of "a little extra help" from cornering lights when I saw them in operation on a Cadillac. So I thought, "Why not?"

 

[jayflash]

My father told me of a car with a center headlight that swiveled left or right with the steering wheel. IIRC it would have been from the 1930's or 40's. That probably created vision problems for oncoming drivers in some cases and wouldn't, necessarily, help as much as a well designed cornering light.

 

[-Virgil-]

My father told me of a car with a center headlight that swiveled left or right with the steering wheel.

The 1948 Tucker, in the United States. Other models in Europe, too.

 

[kingofwylietx]

I don't know how helpful this is to the OP, but I'll still throw it out there. Last week, heading to work in the dark morning hours, my neighbor was behind me in her Subaru.

I noticed that when the road swept left, a light lit up on the lower left side of her car. The same thing happened when the road swept to the right...a light lit up on the lower right side of her car. Maybe that is what they call their steering responsive lights using the fog lights?

OP, is a new (or gently used) vehicle in the cards for you? I'm sure others offer something similar. I thought it was pretty cool, so Inthought i would mention it.

 

[irsa76]

My wife's Citroen C5 has both static halogen cornering lights and active HID which swivel with the steering, and the Isuzu tow truck I drive has halogen cornering lights. I originally dismissed them as gimmicks but am now convinced they are effective.
What would be the best way to wire front fog lights to function as cornering lights?

 

[jayflash]

Virgil, thanks for the link to the 1948 Tucker. That was a fascinating and entertaining read. I went off-topic to read about several early and later automatic trannys.

 

[kingofwylietx]

Virgil, thanks for the link to the 1948 Tucker. That was a fascinating and entertaining read. I went off-topic to read about several early and later automatic trannys.

If you enjoyed reading about it, check out the movie. I'm sure it's on Netflix, downloadable, or something of that nature.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I noticed that when the road swept left, a light lit up on the lower left side of her car. The same thing happened when the road swept to the right...a light lit up on the lower right side of her car. Maybe that is what they call their steering responsive lights using the fog lights?

Exactly. I'm assuming a number of manufacturers offer this by now. It's definitely a feature on Subaru at some trim levels.

 

[pungo]

I remember some of the 80/90s American cars having corning light when using the turn signal, then they kinda went away.
My 2011 BMW X3 has corning lights. It uses the fog lights that have a shield on one side of the H11 bulb to shine more light at the reflector toward the center of the vehicle to bounce more light to the outside corner of the vehicle. They come on with the turn signal and or when the wheel are turned past a certain angle, though the vehicle has to be in motion. The even have a fade on then fade off. They work well to aid in lighting up the direction you're tuning on unlit roadways. It makes much better use of the fog lights since I hardly ever turn then on because we don't get much fog here.