In my thirty years of driving, I’ve never yet had the need to leave my headlights on with my engine off. Why then, can we not have a vehicle whose default is headlights only operational when the engine is running? Or do they?
Many cars now have an “automatic” setting, in which the headlights require:
-key in the run position
AND
-low ambient lighting (e.g. dusk/night/dawn)
A lot of people like this option because then they never have to think about headlights again.
Most European manufactured cars are designed with the headlights only operable when the key is in the “run” position. Or at least the ones I’ve owned were like this. (VW, Saab, Porsche) Actually my current daily driver, a Subaru Outback, is wired this way as well. None of those cars had/have “automatic” headlights.
I had a Volvo which shut the lights off when you switched off the engine. Once I turned the headlights on the first time, I never had to touch the switch again.
My current VW has full-time daytime running lights, which are basically low beam headlights. The problem is that occasionally you forget to turn the headlights on, so you wind up driving at night without taillights.
My guess is that originally there was value in being able to turn the lights on without the engine running. I’ve had to do it several times before. Also the technology back in the day may have made it more difficult to control.
I think all of my last 5 cars had ‘daylight’ running lights or something similar. As an example, my 2007 Tacoma lights have the option that they are always on, until I turn off the car and open the door. They go out when I open the door. I like this option.
My 85 Toyota Celica turned off the lights when the key was turned to the off position until about 1998 when the headlight relay broke and I had a simple switch put in.
Many cars turn off the headlights after 30 seconds or so after the car is locked.
There were probably times when car owners wanted the headlights on (to see something), but didn’t want to leave the engine running. It also may have been an issue with technology: those sort of interlocks were either difficult to set up or were too expensive.
The Master spoke (24 years ago).
Most cars today have a key sensor, and once the key is removed from the ignition the lights turn off.
I’ve used headlights on, engine off for illuminating a campsite or work area. Of course, as mentioned by Cecil, this can be achieved by having the headlights turn off with the ignition and then have a momentary switch to turn them back on. That’s an added expense vs a simple toggle switch, though.
I had a 2005 Corolla that had the automatic headlights as described here, with an ambient light sensor. Problem was that I couldn’t turn the headlights off if the car was running. Since I was working on a military base at the time and convention was to kill the headlights so as not to blind the gate guards, I had to install a secondary headlight kill switch.
One my current vehicles has headlights as described in one of the letters to Cecil, in that they operate like normal headlights except if I kill the ignition with the headlights on, they turn off, and if I start the car again they’ll turn on. This means I never have to think about the headlights, but it also means they’re on all the time. As this vehicle also has a propensity to burn through headlight bulbs about every 6 months, I find this “always on” feature to be annoying, and yet I can’t break the habit.
There’s so many permutations of headlight behavior, and I can see advantages and drawbacks to every one. I don’t think it’s possible to make everyone happy, so auto makers are in the unenviable position of trying to find an 80% solution. Me, I still prefer the classic 3-way toggle switch, no automatic control, no DRL, with a door buzzer. But that’s just because all of my early cars were like that, and there’s a lot of muscle memory built in now.
We have a 2001 Volvo that we took to a drive-in movie once. Huge mistake: it was a hot and sticky night and we had a baby in the car, so we wanted to start up the engine to let the AC run for bit. But in that car, turning it on automatically turned on the headlights - which is obviously a no-no in the middle of a drive-in. We couldn’t roll down the windows, because the baby was crying and we didn’t want to disturb the other cars. It was awful.
On many cars I’ve used the headlights on / engine off though - usually to set up a campsite or illuminate a dark driveway. It’d be a real PITA if you had to have the engine running to do that.
If I have my engine off and my light on, and then I open the door (driver’s side), I get a warning tweet. I prefer that. It warns me, but leaves the decision up to me.
You drove with them on all the time?
I’ve owned 3 cars which automatically turn off the headlights when you switch off the ignition: a 1978 Fiat Spyder, a 1988 Volkswagen Golf, and a 1998 Plymouth Voyager van. In the case of the van, it had a timer. If you left the headlights on after switching off the ignition, it would turn off the headlights 5 minutes later.
I also remember seeing automatic headlights in at least to GM vehicles from the 1990s.
It is safer to drive with the headlights on all the time, day and night. It makes you more visible to other drivers.
However, there are circumstances where it’s advantageous to leave the headlights on while the engine isn’t running, such as when you are going camping and you need a few minutes to unpack your gear and there’s no street lights because you’re out in the woods and you don’t want to leave your engine idling because of the fumes, or the noise, or because it’s wasting fuel. I think I’ve done it maybe 3 times in the last decade.
You never noticed that Volvos always have their lights on? It’s the law in Sweden.
Those are running lights, not headlights (aren’t they)?
Yep, my Volvo hast he same thing. This is great and I dont know why all cars arent made like this. They do have a position for ON when the car is not running, if needed.
Nope, headlights. Your Volvo headlights are always on when the car is running.
I had a similar experience. We were at the drive-in movie, and it was raining too hard to roll the windows down even a little, but humid enough that the windshield kept fogging up. But I didn’t dare turn on the AC/defogger lest the daytime running lights be activated.
A long time later, I was reading the manual and discovered that, if I understand it correctly, the daytime running lights won’t come on when the parking brake is set. If so, I could have safely run the car’s AC after all. :smack:
My house is in a rural area, no street lights, and it’s DARK. A lot of times when coming home at night, I will leave the headlights on with the engine off if I have some sort of task going on, like unloading a lot of bags from the car, or if I want to put something from the car directly into the shed in the back yard.
I have motion lights in the front of the driveway that provide some light, but the headlights are really helpful.