I can easily see what lights are working as I back out of or into the garage so most lights are checked every time I drive. I do try and check the signal lights once a month since I don’t use them during that process.
Also every time we use the trailer we do a walk around and check all lights during the connection process.
Oddly though, now that I think of this, on my Ford’s I haven’t had a light go out in 3 cars and 16 years. My husbands SMART is 6 years old and we’ve replaced the headlights twice.
The turn signal talk reminded me of something my dad did that was so typical of him. Somebody was following him to a destination, with many twists and turns along the way. My dad drove slowly as a courtesy and put on his turn signals early, but signaled for the opposite direction consistently the entire drive. So, he’d signal “right” for a left turn and vice-versa.
When we reached the destination, the guy in the following car told my dad there was a wiring problem with his signals. He got out some scratch paper and drew the circuit, explaining different things that might be going on. He opened the trunk and poked around, then looked under the hood, then crawled under the car, but couldn’t locate the problem. The whole time my dad kept a serious, perplexed expression.
I’m not an electrician, but I’ve always assumed the higher flash rate was due to the loss of resistance on the burned-out bulb causing the [whatever… relay? Capacitor?] to ‘charge’ faster.
I use the garage door or the chrome on the bumper of the guy behind me also to make sure stuff works. I also get the wonderful opportunity to see them when I have to get out to close the gate. My BMW tells me if there is a light out. Sometimes it’s even right!
What exactly has been implied here?
Funny thing, I pull trailers somewhat often and *never *bother to hook up lights. Only ever got stopped once, no ticket.
My bulbs have flashed faster only when the circuit is loaded heavier such as towing a trailer. My Avalanche turn signal stays solid and don’t flash when one of the four bulbs are inoperative (front, rear, front and rear sides.) Not enough load on the bimetallic heater that creates the flash and also the noise. Newer electronics and computers probably work differently. I drove a friends vehicle where the indicator on the dash stayed on if a bulb was bad. No matter how it’s sliced, if the sound or pattern is different, there is a lighting problem.
I have known since before I could drive that you are supposed to check all the lights every day before you start driving.
That doesn’t mean I do.
The only people I have known who do the whole “pre-flight check” are school bus drivers. When my father was driving a school bus, I would help him check the lights. Every single day.
When I was driving a car, I would do the more passive checks you described: look at the car ahead of me at a stoplight to see if both my headlights were lit, look for the red glow of my taillights, see if I could see the flash of my turn signals.
A lot of the time I had a car I was working pizza delivery, and I would sometimes walk the long way around my car just to check all the lights since I could with minimal effort.
Now I ride a scooter, and one of the great things about it is that I can see all of the lights from the driver’s seat.
I find that I will sometimes lean back at a stoplight to make sure my rear turn signal is actually working. Often I check that just to see if the people who were making it hard to change lanes were jerks or not. (Thus far, it has always turned out they were jerks; I have replaced one turn signal bulb, and it was on the front.)
I noticed that front turn signal was out because I couldn’t see it reflected off the car in front of me.
My scooter has two headlights, and it was quite obvious when one of them blew its low beam (and even more obvious when the other one did too). But it also has a little token marker light on the front that blew at some point. I don’t know how long it took me to notice, but I did notice one darkish morning when I returned home and saw my reflection in the window that faces the end of my driveway, and realized I should see a light there.
Lastly, because my electric starter won’t work unless the brake light is lit, every time I start it I am checking my brake light. (It might work even if the bulb burns out, but since it is the light I am checking I’ll notice that when/if it happens.)
So:
I know I should do a full check every day, but I don’t. I check my brake light every day for practical reasons, and I check the others at random intervals. Most of them are very obvious when they don’t work.
My stepfather’s 1978 Honda Accord (and my 1980 one) had a button on the steering column that would light up little warning lights on the dashboard.
There was a little picture of the car, and when a door was open there would be a light by the door and such. The button on the column was just to test the warning lights to make sure they worked.
There were lights on that picture where the brake/tail lights were. I never had one burn out, so I don’t know if that would trigger the warning light (it may have warned of actual brake failure, rather than the failure of the light).
The store window reflection is the easiest way if one has no helper.
Now, about those turn signals- every car I’ve ever been in had indicators on the dash, but some just had one ('62 Chevy II, old VW beetle). What all the old cars had that few of the new ones have were easily audible turn signals. Some GM ones even had a pleasant chime tone. I believe silent turn signals are the cause of so many elders driving down the road with a signal on for miles. I have a Yaris and its right indicator is over the passenger’s left knee since the thing has a centered dash cluster. There are a few right turns in my daily travels which aren’t sharp enough to make the signals cancel, and I have caught myself driving along with the right blinker going therefore. If the car had 60s style blinker sounds, I’d turn it off sooner.
My understanding for the quite turn signals is that today’s cars use an electronic blinker (some kind of chip), while the older ones used a relay. The loud click that we associated with turn signals was the sound of the relay switching the lights on and off.
I remember a few decades back having to replace the blinker relay on an old car and finding the new one was almost silent.
While the jokes about folks who can’t notice their blinkers are on are funny, and I was trying to think of a way to spin it to be about the folks who never seem to use their blinkers, last night I saw something I see a lot more often: a car driving with its headlights on, but no tail or parking lights at all.
Two things about this:
this is probably a fuse. Every car I have owned had the headlights and parking lights on the same switch, so you had to turn the parking lights on to turn the headlights on. But they also had the parking lights and headlights on separate fuses.
I have considered that maybe the “headlights” were just the daytime running lights, but they seem too bright for that.
On every car I have ever owned, the dashboard lights came on with the parking lights. So if the fuse for the parking lights blew, I assume the light that lights up my speedometer would not come on.
How can someone not notice that?
I mean, I can easily see overlooking something for a few blocks, but how can you drive for miles, how can you get on a highway and not glance at your speedometer.
I have had cars where the dash lights went out, I have had cars where I could adjust their brightness all the way down to off, and I have noticed that I forgot to turn on my headlights specifically because I couldn’t read my dash by the light outside the car.
How can people drive for miles without noticing their dash lights are out?
Or am I wrong about the dash lights not coming on if your parking lights are out?
Funny thing today, I had to change 4 bulbs in the rear end!!. I check last November while winterizing. I was just thinking it was probably overdue for a recheck, but next week is supposed to be nice so I was putting off till after the weekend. I had to run an errand before work, so I was on the road 6:30ish. A guy pulled up beside me and did the window motion, and let me know a brake light was out. I said thanks and made a mental note of it.
After work I picked up a bulb on the way home at started putting it in. I checked the side fender tail light bulb and it was burned out as well. So I checked the other side. Both tails lights, the one in the hatch back and the on on the fender side were burned out.
So back to the store for 3 more bulbs. Man I hope it was just coincidence they all burned out in a three month period, but I’m now scared I have an underlying electrical problem.
At least they were all rear end lights, the headlight fixture bulbs in my Outback are a serious bitch to change for those of us who only possess one elbow per arm.
When I turn off and on my car alarm my headlights and taillights flash. I look at my car when I’m unlocking it/locking it and can see if the lights flash. I approach my car from different directions throughout the week so if I don’t see all the lights flash when I unlock it with the remote keyless entry then I know something is out.
I once had a trailer with defective light wiring. I towed it all over the place without ever hooking the useless connector up to the truck. Never a problem w other cars or the cops.
