The Equipment Law

The legal frame has two layers, and keeping them straight matters. Section 55 of Cap 403 is titled "Condition of vehicles" — the general offence of using a vehicle on a road when its parts, equipment, lights, or tyres aren't maintained in a safe condition, making it a danger to others. It is not a lamp section; lights are one thing it covers. The specific lamp requirements — number, colour, reach, dazzle — live in the Traffic Rules (Nos. 23 and 24) made under the Act.

(Notice the reach of s.55: the brakes of Lesson 5.2, the tyres of 5.3, and the steering of 5.4 all sit under the same "condition" offence. s.55 is the legal spine of this whole module — "keep the vehicle in safe condition" is one law, and lights are today's slice of it.)

What the lamp rules (23/24) require, for every vehicle class:

• Front: two lamps (motorcycles one), one each side, white or yellow, lighting 100–150 m ahead and marking the vehicle's presence to approaching traffic from 150 m — moving or stationary on an unlit road at night.
• Rear: two lamps, red, marking the vehicle's presence from not less than 200 m to traffic behind — moving or stationary.
• Placement is specified: two front, two rear, at or near the vehicle's ends on either side. Extras in the grille, on the roof, above the plate fall outside the rule.
• Motorcycles must run the front lamp lit even in daylight — a legal daytime-running requirement for two-wheelers.

The dazzle rule — the sentence this lesson turns on: all required lamps must be equipped with a means of eliminating any dazzling effect, and that elimination must still leave enough light to clearly illuminate the road ahead for at least 25 metres. That's the dip function, as law: your headlamps must be dippable, and the dipped beam must still work as a lamp. A vehicle whose lights cannot avoid dazzling oncoming traffic is non-compliant as equipment, before any question of how it's driven.