I’m 58. So older than you, but not ancient. (Yet.)
But the transition from floor-mounted to steering column-mounted headlight switches happened shortly after I learned to drive and probably about the time you were old enough to remember anything about riding around with your parents.
I think about that time the marketing departments took the opportunity to update their terminology. So it’s a “highbeam switch” or similar from about 1975-1980 on.
Do teens (or 8 yos) today “dial” their phone or “hang up” at the end of a call? Do you? I do, even though I haven’t owned a landline since about 2001, nor a rotary dial phone since I was 9.
Language is fun. Far from static or standardized. But still fun.
Actually, January and February are usually pretty sunny. November and December are the snowy months, then the deep freeze sets in with low temps and high barometer readings.
And also with ~5 hours from sunrise to sunset. Crisp and blue while it lasts; it just doesn’t last long enough to cover driving both to and from work. For many folks it covers neither.
Or so it seemed when I lived mid-north by US standards but very far south by Canadian standards.
I understand that, but not every American car was able to ‘flash’ the headlights just because the dimmer was moved to the stalk. I have a '96 Monte Carlo, and it was a pretty expensive model, and the dimmer is on the stalk, however, it only works to turn the bright lights on (and off). It has no function if the lights are turned off.
This was not the first car that I owned with the dimmer on the stalk and none of the other cars were able to flash the headlights with the lights off, either.
I have driven various cars since 1956 and never had any problem finding the dimmer switch on the floor board.
Running on high beams (or brights if you prefer) is still the norm on the highway at night. To the point that if you don’t have your high beams when approaching another car the other driver is likely to flash their brights at you thinking you didn’t dim your lights. At certain times of the year having your high beams on can mean the difference between having time to stop before you hit the deer that just appeared in the middle road and not having time.
I suspect most of the people who just can’t imagine driving with your high beams on have never driven long distances on dark nights.
Agree. Although the issue isn’t long distances but rather traffic density.
You can drive 1000 miles up I-95 entirely at night and never be farther than 100 feet from at least one other car. You can drive across US-50 in NV in mid afternoon on a nice day and see one car every 20 minutes, if that often. People whose only experience is like one of those can’t imagine the other even exists.
The first I heard of dimmer switches (as they were known to us back then) were some place other than on the floor was when a friend bought a Toyota in about '77. I also remember someone having a horn on a stalk.
Born 1970, US. Never, ever heard it called a “dimmer switch.” It’s always the “high beams,” which you rarely get to use. Even on rural roads, you rarely go more than a few minutes without encountering another car either in front of you or behind you.
I’ve called it a dimmer switch my entire life. That’s what I was taught in my 1970’s drivers Ed. class and every person I knew called it a dimmer switch.
