Yes, and a setting where you can leave them on is useful, once in a while. But why not do as Volvo? “Car on, headlights on” being default.
We were Christmas Light Looking and headlights, even parking lights, made it difficult to see properly. I found that I could click the manual parking brake one notch, drive without hurting the brakes, and still have the lights off.
My '66 VW seemed odd to me since the radio would work with the key off, but the headlights wouldn’t. That was backwards compared to the U.S. cars of the day.
I still find it strange that the cigar lighter socket (just 12 V accessory socket now) in any Asian car has to have the key on to work.
On my 1996 Olds Ciera (for sale if you’re interested), the headlights (not running lights) turns on when the engine cranks. Which means for the past 18 years, I have not had to think about turning on my headlights. Bought a new car in May and I have to remind myself about the lights again.
Because they use a non-zero amount of finite electrical energy and confer no benefit in daylight?
But they do. Studies show it is safer to drive with your headlights on even during the day.
I drive a Toyota Tundra and I’ve started just keeping the lights on all the time. They go off about 30 seconds after I close the driver side door with the key removed or if I click the lock remote twice.
Nobody old enough to remember being out where there are no lights, but still needed to see what you were doing?
Car headlights served as default utility lights for many generations.
Do we really need testimonials about every car with headlights wired through the ignition switch?
My car has an automatic setting on the headlights, I hate it. I like to decide when the headlights are on, not the car. Luckily the auto setting is optional.
Automatic variable-speed wipers, those are much cooler. But there is a bug, the wipers must detect rain on the windshield with some sort of an optical sensor. Sometimes on a sunny day when I’m driving under trees the flickering sunlight triggers the wipers.
And the auto-dimming rearview mirror is also very nice.
My car works like that too, I think. I have a 2001 Toyota of some sort that I just bought last year. It appears that NONE, or hardly any, of the user-operated controls actually directly operate whatever they supposedly operate. Everything is mediated through the on-board computer. Every user-operated control seems to be, really, just a user-operated “request”, which the computer takes into account along with umpteen other factors, whereupon it decides what it will actually do. (ETA: The night-time headlights come on when I either release the brake or take it out of Park (I forget which), but if you put it back in Park and set the brake again, the lights don’t go back off.)
I don’t know how fully detailed the user manual is. It can’t be too detailed, or it would be the size of a modern teach-yourself-Java book. And besides, do I ever RTFM? Who, other than Thudlow Boink, does?
I’m still trying to figure out all the arcane and convoluted rules by which this car operates. For example, the headlight logic seems to be tied together with either the parking brake (as TB says), or maybe it’s when I take the car out of Park, or both, or something, along with the ambient light sensor and the position of the manual console switch, which also has a “flash brights” springy position.
There are rules for when the power windows work and when they don’t. (They seem to continue working for about a minute after shutting down, and maybe the clock starts over every time I actually operate a window.) Even the ignition key slot lights up according to certain rules, which seems tied in with the doors being opened or closed or locked or something. The trunk has an easy-to-access latch handle inside in case by baggage becomes sentient and decides to escape under its own power, and even that latch handle is illuminated.
And I’ve totally given up on trying to figure out how all the settings on the radio work. There’s no documentation that I have, and trying to navigate all its menus and settings is like trying to find my way through Colossal Cave, that early-1970s-era Adventure game.
I’m just glad the steering wheel actually steers the wheels directly (I think). I suppose the next generation of cars won’t even have steering wheels, if Google has their way.
Mine aren’t.
There is a difference between headlights and daytime running lamps. Long story short Europe, the UK & Canada all require DRLs (daytime running lamps), but the US does not. About twenty years ago it seemed like they were going to make them mandatory and although many US manufacturers made (and still make) models with them they are not required. Here’s the Wiki entry as to why.
As per the OP, I’ve personally always felt that the problem of leaving your lights on & killing your battery was outweighed by the potential for the light circuit to either fail or the ignition to be accidentally turned off while driving at night at speed. IOW it was better to have headlights be simple and ‘fail-safe’ rather than add the minor convenience of ‘auto-off’. If you’re traveling down a pitch black highway at 70+ mph and you accidentally fumble with your keys and turn your headlights off you could be dead in just a few seconds.
Even with today’s completely computerized car systems I’d still prefer a simple warning tone when you leave them on to ***any ***kind of auto-control of the headlights.
Seriously? Who the hell accidentally fumbles with keys and turns the headlights off? That’s laughable. If you “fumble” with your keys and turn the headlights off you have more pressing things to worry about, like no steering or brakes.
Anyway, I mentioned earlier that cars that have key sensors are the way to go; you remove the key and the lights go off. The key doesn’t even have to be turned, just inserted into the ignition.
I’ve been a passenger in cars that were cruising at highway speeds and for whatever reason the engine stalled. And the idiot drivers have sometimes turned the key to OFF (not LOCK but OFF) just out of reflex and/or incompetence. Thankfully they were American cars and the lights stayed on. In fact, in the 70s at least one car maker (VW maybe?) made a ‘safety’ feature to prevent you from grinding your starter into the moving flywheel ring gear (IOW trying to start an already running car) which would only allow you to turn the key from ON to START once then a lockout would engage and you had to turn it all the way back to OFF to get it to turn to START again. Needless to say it was not a popular feature.
And as long as the car is rolling you’ll have no problem steering. And all cars have several reserve ‘pumps’ in the power brake vacuum reservoir, and the brake pedal is always wide enough to push with both feet if necessary.
Which is absolutely nothing like fumbling with the keys and turning the engine off, and in no way affects the headlights.
Yep, VW except they didn’t stop doing it in the 70’s. Every VW Group car is still like that, or at least the ones that still have traditional key ignitions.
If your Volvo is a model year 1993 or later it does.
In the earlier 100/200/700 series cars leaving the headlight switch in the “On” position accomplished the same thing.
I have a 2014. In the daylight, only the daytime running lights are on, the headlights are not.
Yeah, why not?
Geez, how specific do I have to be?!? Your car stalls, and then you might fumble with the keys, possibly turning them to OFF (and therefore maybe turning off the headlights!) instead of just turning them to START.
Remember the Toyota accelerator incident? Not to be insensitive, but you’ve got to be pretty ignorant and/or panicked to not realize you can just slip the tranny into neutral rather than continue accelerating out of control if the throttle malfunctions (which it didn’t, it was just the floor mat). IOW there are a lot of stupid drivers in the world and car manufacturers need to design for this for critical components…