Riga's dark season: pedestrians, lights and your first autumn behind the wheel

In late September Riga switches into a different mode. The sun sets at around seven in the evening, and earlier every week: by December it will be dark by about 15:30. The morning commute and the evening driving lesson increasingly happen at dusk or in full darkness. If you got your licence in the summer, this is your first autumn behind the wheel — and it honestly shows everything that daytime driving did not.

Why a pedestrian "disappears" in the dark

The main autumn hazard is not the rain or the leaves — it is a person in a dark jacket on an unlit stretch. In dipped-beam light, a pedestrian without reflectors becomes visible from about 25–40 metres. At 50 km/h a car covers that distance in roughly two to three seconds — almost nothing is left for reaction and braking. The pedestrian, meanwhile, sees your headlights from far away and genuinely believes you see them too. That mismatch is the classic scenario behind autumn pedestrian collisions.

The statistics back this up: in 2024, 111 people died on Latvia's roads, and 33 of them were pedestrians. Nearly one in three. That is why the Road Traffic Safety Directorate (CSDD) runs pedestrian-visibility campaigns every autumn — the problem repeats year after year.

What the law says about reflectors

The road traffic rules (Cabinet Regulation No. 279, paragraph 10) require that in the dark hours, when the road is not sufficiently and evenly lit, a pedestrian walking on the carriageway or the roadside must wear a reflective vest or clothing with reflective elements. Note: this is not just a rural-road rule — on an unlit stretch inside a town the requirement applies just the same.

It concerns you as a driver directly, too. If you are forced to stop on the carriageway in the dark — a breakdown, say — and you step out of the car, you must put on a reflective vest (paragraph 25.6). Keep the vest in the cabin, not at the bottom of the boot under your things: you will be reaching for it while already standing on the road.

The wording of the rules can be amended — check the current text on likumi.lv (as of 2026).

Headlights: getting autumn right

In Latvia, lights are on all year and around the clock. In daylight hours the rules (paragraph 160) require driving with daytime running lights, dipped beam or front fog lights on. In the dark — dipped or main beam plus position lights.

The autumn specifics:

Daytime running lights (DRLs) do not light the road and often leave the rear lights off. At dusk and in rain, a car running only on DRLs is nearly invisible from behind. The simple rule: once it turns grey, switch dipped beam on manually — do not wait for darkness.
Main beam — outside town, wherever it dazzles no one. Oncoming car, car ahead, a lit stretch — switch down early.
Fog lights — only when visibility is genuinely poor. On an ordinary evening they just dazzle everyone else.
Clean lights and glass. Autumn grime on the headlights eats a noticeable share of your light, and film on the windscreen turns every oncoming lamp into a halo.

Wet leaves and the first frosts

A layer of wet leaves on asphalt grips closer to ice than to a wet road. Leaves are at their most treacherous in bends, near pedestrian crossings and on tram rails. And with the first night frosts — usually well before any snow — morning rime appears on bridges and in dips: bridges freeze first, because cold air chills them from both sides.

The recipe is the same as in winter: slow down before the slippery stretch, not on it, and keep a longer gap than in summer. For the full winter mode — tyres, ice, braking — there is a separate guide.

If your CSDD exam is this autumn

Autumn candidates take the exam in more honest conditions than summer ones: dusk, wet asphalt, glare. That is not a reason to panic — it is a reason to practise in exactly those conditions.

Train in the dark. If your exam is at 17:00 in October, part of the route will run at dusk. Do at least a few lessons in the evening.
Crossings under special watch. The examiner checks whether you slow down where a pedestrian might be hidden. I have covered the typical places where candidates lose the exam separately.
Lights are your responsibility. Failing to switch dipped beam on in time is a mistake the examiner records.

A hard first autumn is normal

If you drove calmly all summer and find yourself tense again in October, there is nothing wrong with you. Darkness, rain and glare genuinely shrink the time you have for decisions, and the brain needs to recalibrate its habits. One or two evening lessons with someone beside you — working through specific junctions and crossings — restore confidence faster than a month of anxious solo driving. You can book a lesson online; the evening slots exist for exactly this.

Riga's dark season is long. If you learn to drive in it in autumn, December will have nothing new to show you.