Car Lights

Visualizing color and position

In high school I had a minor accident when I misread really dim brake lights as tail lights. It was my fault (sorry, Tommy!), but it’s bothered me ever since that these two very different messages — “My headlights are on” v. “I’m not moving” — are communicated by shades of the same color. I had a couple of open days recently and decided to see what I could learn about car lighting colors.

The American regulations documents weren’t freely available, but I did find a PDF detailing European regulations. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for, but I thought it’d still be interesting to see. I created a visualization cataloging the different color and placement options for each of the 24 standard lights.

How to Read

The top half of the circles represent front-facing lamps, while the bottom half represents rear-facing lamps. The vertically split spheres represent side lamps. Where more than one color is shown in the same location (ex. #3 Front Fog Lamp) either color is acceptable. If there are two colors in different locations (ex. #13 Parking Lamp) both are part of the regulations.

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