:smack: My wife’s car does the same thing. :smack:
I love my automatic headlights and wipers. I don’t turn anything off (the stereo’s usually off anyway. I like to think in silence when driving.)
I turn the AC off. I was told a long time ago that it’s bad to have coolant circulating when you kill the engine because it pools in bad spots.
It’s probably not true, but its a reflex now.
I also turn he headlights off (they’re auto-off but not auto-on) on the off chance that my battery is almost completely discharged when i get back into the car and having them on before starting robs me of just enough juice to start the car.
Seriously, what’s the risk of this. Surely it becomes pretty obvious … when you realize you can’t see the road?
You’d be amazed at how often this happens in urban areas. It is brightly enough lit that you just drive off. I’ve encountered people driving down one of our busiest motorways without lights at night, presumably having come from a brightly lit shopping centre.
I had a Citroen BX that would fool you into thinking the lights were on as the instrument panel lit up all the time the engine was running, caught me out a couple of times.
Why, it even caught Paris out and there is no-one brighter than her 
I’ve done this myself. Damn near every part of San Francisco, excluding the parks, is lit well enough that you don’t need headlights, and don’t notice they’re off. My headlights turn off when I open the door, so I never turn them off. I’m so into that routine that if I’m waiting in the car for someone, I open & close my door to turn the lights off, rather than switch them off and risk forgetting to turn them back on.
It’s not true.
But, as I said, as soon as you noticed that you couldn’t see the street, you’d turn them on, right? In places where it’s so bright you don’t notice, surely it’s not that huge a danger to have your headlights off for a few seconds.
>In places where it’s so bright you don’t notice, surely it’s not that huge a danger to have your headlights off for a few seconds.
I think the driver is reminded to turn the headlights on by difficulty seeing without them, if that happens, but the bigger hazard is that he is much less visible to the other cars, especially if he’s the only one without lights on.
you would be amazed, I spend a lot of time on the road compared to your average driver, people will drive without headlights in the dumbest places. but anytime its even close to dark you should have them on, personally I have them on anytime I am driving, day or night. not because I need them to see all the time but because it makes it easier for the other people to see my car.
On the other side of this, I am used to Volvos which have pretty damn good headlights. Then there was this time I rented a car from Hertz once at the Newark airport. It was raining that night. Up the Turnpike I went. The road was fairly well lit, and all seemed well. Then I got on the Palisades Parkway which had no street lighting at all. I could not see shit. I checked the light switch, it was on. WTF?
I finally pulled over and got out and walked around to the front of the car. Yes the headlights were on, they were just really crappy. I think the two fireflys were on life support. I took the car in and swapped for a different model car the next day.
I’ve always wondered what that was for. When I was stationed in Germany in the early 90’s, all the cars did that, from 20 years old to the latest model. Sure enough, my rental car in Germany just a few days ago did the same thing. Is there a special purpose for leaving the turn signal indicator on solid on one side of the car?
As for headlights, I’ve had automatic headlights on every car (except the trucks) going back for ten years now. Greatest invention ever.
I do turn off my wipers, though. It just bugs me to leave them on.
My stereo automatically reduces to a reasonable level upon startup if I leave it at a certain level or higher, which prevents those ear-splitting moments. It stays at its previous level if I leave it below that threshold, though.
This is a secret my co-worker told me that car manufacturer’s don’t tell you. On newer vehicles (I think 06’ and on), you must turn your air conditioner OFF when turning off your car and leaving, or it WILL drain the battery, slowly. We have to jump new vehicles all of the time due to this. I don’t know the exact reason it drains the battery, but this is what he told me. Something about it leaving a positive current open… I really am not positive though, IANAE. Just turn off your AC if you have newer cars.
ALL VWs and Audis do this. It is for parking purposes. It used to be that you had to leave parking lights on at night and by having only the lamps on the ‘road’ side illuminated yo used only half the current thereby reducing the load on the battery.
There was no such thing on British cars and I remember my dad having to get up early and turn the parking lights off as soon as it was light. Then he bought a lamp that fixed to the top of the window and had a white lens and a red lens, one lamp replacing four.
Never see anyone using parking lights anymore but you still see Audis and VWs with them on down one side where the driver hasn’t cancelled the turn signal when parking.
Every car in Germany did this back in the day… except for our American SOFA cars and the military vehicles. My rental was a GM (Opel something or other). I wonder if this is a vestige of old, non-reflectorized rear lamps, then? Seems like a reflection is just fine to avoid a collision. I don’t recall ever actually seeing the lights turned on when driving at night, but then again, there’s not a whole lot of American-style, on-street parallel parking that I saw, either. Hell, it was damn near impossible just to find a place to pull over to program the GPS!
Nothing personal, but that sounds like [del]horseshit[/del] an urban legend. The only electrical components of an AC system are the compressor fan clutch, the blower fan, and the low pressure cutout/defrost circuit. The fan clutch is controlled by a relay, which is deenergized while the vehicle is off, so unless Rick or Gary T pop in to support that claim, I’d consider it to be without merit.