In our country, it is compulsory to keep the lights on during the day, because our traffic experts have decided on the most radical law. In neighbouring countries, this has been handled in a more thoughtful, rational and environmentally friendly way. In Italy and Hungary, this obligation applies on motorways and outside settlements, Croatia has abolished the compulsory switching on of lights during daylight saving time, and in Austria, a similar legal obligation was abolished in January 2008. I have asked the Public Agency for Traffic Safety (AzP) and the Ministry of Transport (MzP) a specific question as to why we have to have lights on our vehicles every day, in congested congested traffic congested for kilometres, and in urban centres during the daylight hours. I did not get an answer to this question, but I was sent the results of research by the Dutch TNO Institute, which recommends that lights should be on during the day. What is surprising, however, is that the AzP and the MoI do not have a study that addresses the harmful consequences of the law, which are manifested at night in the increased number of vehicles on our roads with only one headlamp or light operating, due to the maximum load and the burning out of the car bulbs.
It is well known that having lights on during the day increases fuel consumption and harmful CO2 emissions by 0.5-1.5%. A simple calculation shows the horrendous figures for the electricity consumed in vehicles, which we must generate using different propellants. There are more than one million registered passenger cars in Slovenia, and more than 350 000 vans and commercial vehicles. If we take into account that one in five vehicles, or 20% of all vehicles, is in use at any time during the day, with an average consumption of 150 W, the current power output is 40 500 kW and the electricity consumption 405 000 kWh per day. If we consider an average electricity consumption of 250 kWh per month per household, this means that as many as 1,620 households consume as much as 1,620 kWh per month with their lights on every day during the day. Considering only 20% of all vehicles with lights on during the day, 147.8 GWh are wasted per year, which is more than the entire year's production of the Medvode HPP. Our transport experts did not bother with similar calculations when such a radical law was adopted, but the transport experts of the largest countries in the European Union, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, who, with tens of millions of vehicles, were well aware of the extra energy consumed and the pollution of the environment, and therefore do not have similar laws, did bother with them. The EU is also proving that similar calculations are worth paying attention to, by making the installation of energy-saving LED daytime running lights (DRLs) compulsory this year; the problems will solve themselves within a decade or more. It is interesting that the experts in the car factories are working on start-stop and similar systems to reduce energy consumption and pollution in urban environments, where it is most harmful, while here, with a bad and harmful law, we are allowing increased energy consumption and additional pollution in housing estates and urban centres. I call on the AzP and the MoI to initiate a procedure to partially amend the reckless and harmful law and to eliminate the mandatory lighting of lights during the day in settlements and urban centres.