Interior car bulbs and "road legal"

Jan 12, 2017 6 Replies

Am I right in thinking that the concept of "road legal" only applies to exterior lamps on a vehicle?



I might be replacing the boot light with an LED festoon equivalent, ditto one or two other interior lamps.



Just noticed the Philips and Osram LED bulbs are marked as "not road legal" so hence the question...



And the insurers don't care (I did check) provided they don't contravene any regulations.



Cheers,



Tim


Yes, unless for example a blue light inside the vehicle could make it look like a police car!

Chris

Hi Chris,

No these are just white lights. Thanks for that! It is kind of common sense, but with vehicle regs these days, a lot of things that seem obvious are not necessarily still so!

So in this case, an Osram 6000K festoon would be fine inside the vehicle, but illegal if fitted to the number plate fittings? (Unless for off road use only).

I did have a glance at the The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989 but it's long and only mentions interior lamps as "may show a white light to the rear" by way of an exemption to the general rule of red only (with other exceptions noted similarly, eg indicators, number plate lights, reversing lights).

On a related topic - who defines "road legal white" anyway? There seemed to be no mention in the Act of maximum power ratings, maximum lumens or colour temperature of say, headlights, but I do know some some very high Kelvin lamps are not road legal.

Presumably this is covered in individual application regulatory markings?

My cheapo car stereo does that.

Trouble is regs can take a long time to catch up with technology.

Yes, the schedules to the regs state which (external) lamps must bear an approval mark, and then any EU approval mark is valid.

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