Curious

Hi, ,

1. Does anyone know the model year when the laws required cars to have those day running lights?

2. How long plastics such as saran wrap or those bags used as grocery stores will last when buried?

Glowpun said:

Hi, ,

1. Does anyone know the model year when the laws required cars to have those day running lights?

2. How long plastics such as saran wrap or those bags used as grocery stores will last when buried?

Click to expand...

Plenty of new cars don't have daytime running lights.

I don't think there's any law requiring them. There should be, but I don't think there is.

My recollection is that they're required in Canada now, so many manufacturers just put them on so they don't have to deal with different setups.

Glowpun said:

Hi, 1. Does anyone know the model year when the laws required cars to have those day running lights?

Click to expand...

DRL are not mandated by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), DOT.

https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...p-reflective-devices-and-associated-equipment

However I don't know if there are state or local jurisdictions that mandate them. Unlikely though.

Glowpun said:

2. How long plastics such as saran wrap or those bags used as grocery stores will last when buried?

Click to expand...

No one knows exactly. Probably a century or more. It takes an incredibly long time for plastics, or anything really, to biodegrade when buried. The decomposition of trash is helped along when it's exposed to sunlight, moisture, bacteria and other elements. Barely any of that is present in a landfill.

Likewise when thin plastics are exposed to the elements - like floating in the oceans - it either shreds and is eaten by/pollutes the sea's food chain, or it decomposes into a bunch of chemicals that are normally not present in sea water that then still leeches into the food chain. See section 10: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769161/ Saran wrap is made out of polyvinylidene chloride. Bags are thin film polyethylene (PE).

Plastic is recyclable, which is well and good for bottles and other commodities. However plastic bags themselves are near impossible to process (gums up and breaks sorting machines) and has little to no ROI for companies to recycle.

Dragonfly said:

Plenty of new cars don't have daytime running lights.

I don't think there's any law requiring them. There should be, but I don't think there is.

Click to expand...

Are you sure? Where I am every new car I see has the DRL with the newer ones having the LEDs like Audi, Honda, etc.

The one exception I see is the Jeep Wrangler.

Glowpun said:

Hi, ,

1. Does anyone know the model year when the laws required cars to have those day running lights?

2. How long plastics such as saran wrap or those bags used as grocery stores will last when buried?

Click to expand...

Technically running lights have been mandatory in many states since the turn of the century, and I literally mean running!

Some states still have it on the book but never enforce it, saying if a woman got behind the wheel of a car, a man had to run ahead of the car with a red lantern to warn the townspeople of the danger that followed.