Now that it gets dark earlier, I've discovered how shockingly bad the reversing light is on my wife's Kamiq, Reversing down my narrow drive is tricky in the dark, especially when it's raining and I had to keep tapping the brake to see where I was going.

Has anyone found a solution or way to improve things?

Switching on the rear fog light will probably help.

Modern reversing light theory appears to be biased more towards being just an indicator to other drivers.

You're not imagining it, they're poor on the Kamiq. First thing worth checking is whether yours lights up on both sides when you select reverse. On a lot of these the reversing lamp is only on one side and the other side is the rear fog, so you're working with one 16W bulb.

Options people have tried:

1. LED bulb in place of the standard one. It's a W16W wedge bulb (the Skoda part is N10591501). A decent LED is a big improvement, but cheap "CANBUS error free" ones often still throw a "check reversing lights" message because the car sees the low current draw. There's a thread on here (Change reversing light bulbs to LEDs, Kamiq section) where owners got round it either with better quality bulbs or by coding that bulb as LED with OBDeleven or Carista.

2. Make sure whatever you fit is plain white and properly seated. Reversing lamps are part of the MOT on anything first used from September 2009, and one that's not working or showing the wrong colour is a major fail.

3. If it's really the drive that's the problem rather than the light, rear parking sensors or a camera might be the better spend, as even a good LED only lights a short way behind.

I'd try one decent LED first and see if it's enough before going further.

I had a similar issue with a Polo, only one side lit & poor levels. I did try an LED replacement which was a bit brighter, but still on the wrong side. I was negotiating a low wall on the offside & the bulb was on the nearside. Only effective solution I found was to light the wall with a solar powered light.

So maybe look at lighting the drive, although that's obviously no help elsewhere...

Thank you for the comprehensive suggestions. I already have PIR lights over the drive but they trigger much too late to do any good. I've coated the glass on her car with Rain X, although I've never seen much improvement with it before. I'll consider the LED bulbs. I noticed earlier there are two reversing lights, I'll check later to see if they both work

Edited 29 minutes ago29 min by skoda998