Here is the link:
http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060831/2006-08-31T030652Z_01_N29147385_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-ENVIRONMENT-CALIFORNIA-DC.html
AllQuality DRL devices help reduce comparative greenhouse gases with respect to daytime headlight usage and most white light DRL types. How?
Energy is never free, and headlight electrical consumption causes excess fuel to be burned. For every one gallon of liquid fuel burned, about 20 pounds of CO2 gases are released into the atmosphere. In 1998 the Federal Register noted that turn signal DRLs can save up to 0.5 mpg over white light DRLs.
A vehicle that operates with it's headlight energized during the day, travels 20,000 daytime miles every year, and gets 15 mpg will consume about 1333 gallons of fuel per year. A good example here might be a diesel mass transit bus. With turn signal DRLs substituted in place of headlight operation, the vehicle's mileage can increase to 15.5 mpg. Annual fuel consumption then decreases to 1290 gallons per year, yielding a savings of 43 gallons of fuel per year. At $3 per gallon, this is about $130 per year saved and about 860 pounds fewer CO2 gases released into the atmosphere.
This is not a big number for an individual vehicle. Yet in the US there are around 200,000,000 vehicles registered on the roads today, and approximately 10% drive with their headlights on during the day. If only 10,000,000 vehicles (5%) fell into this catagory, and each could reduce its annual CO2 output by 860 pounds, then 4.3 million US tons of annual CO2 gases alone would be kept from the atmosphere over the US. And the vehicles would be safer and more visible due to AMBER light being more visible to the human eye at a lower power than white light.
Below is a 2002 Honda Civic, with aftermarket projector headlight assemblies and aftermarket AMBER Turn Signal DRLs, acting on 21 watt amber signal bulbs, instead of 45 watt low beam headlight bulbs or 65 watt high beam headlight bulbs. This arrangement also offers lower overall fleet costs, which includes lower long term bulb replacement costs, as proven by a 1995 Transport Canada (Canada's equivalent to the US DOT's NHTSA) study. Environmentally, this also means less fleet-type glass headlight bulbs entering landfills over time, which are of course non-biodegradable.
Click on the photo for an enlarged view
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