Is it illegal to drive with the interior lights on in your car?

It was almost a rite of passage growing up for your parents to turn around furiously and tell you to turn the inside light off.

You may have turned it on to locate a missing packet of sweets or simply to help you read but it was usually met with a stern warning.

The classic parental response to such a heinous crime was that turning the interior light on in the car while driving was an illegal act.

However, it seems that we've been suffering in the darkness for absolutely no reason.

A quick check of the Highway Code reveals that it is perfectly legal to have this light switched on.

Although it's also not listed on the RTA's informative list of things you can be booked for, it might be best not to keep the light on for too long.

Officers may not take kindly to anything that may distract the driver from the road, but there's nothing in the code that fundamentally bars the light from being on.

However, driving with the light on does create unnecessary and unsafe reflection on the windscreen, so make sure you're extra careful while doing so.

Speaking to the Mirror , a spokesman for the The RAC said: “There is no law against this [interior light]. However, if a police officer pulls you over and adjudges your interior light to be a driving distraction they have the right to tell you to turn it off.”