Heck, never mind “these days” or auto-on, to give an example from personal use a 2009 Accord with no auto-on and physical-pointer analog gauges for speed/tach/fuel/temp has them always backlit, same with the stereo’s screen. It is only if/when you try to reach for the AC setting that you notice it’s not lit. (BTW although that car has no auto-on, it DID include an auto-off battery saver, so after a certain time after you cut the ignition the lights would turn off anyway)
As for the loss of use of the headlight dimmer, I can only blame a decay of proper driver ed (just as for the insistence on using the flashers alone rather than turning on the actual driving lights in stormy conditions). Plus probably a not insignificant amount of “but I NEED to SEE as far as possible ALWAYS!!!” Dude, it’s night. It’s dark. Accept that you can’t see for miles and miles and* slow down to a speed that lets you brake within visual range* and if you are in traffic dim the lights. Though with that and the overpowering headlights there is also a factor of misaiming: if people installing these air-raid-searchlight-grade HID lights aim them STRAIGHT AHEAD trying to spot things all the way to the horizon, it only makes things worse.
My car has automatic headlights, but sometimes they don’t turn on when I think it’s dark enough that they should be on, so I switch them on myself. (Other times my headlights will turn on in full daylight. So I have no idea what’s going on there.)
What I’d like to know is, why can’t they wire the headlights into the wiper switch so that your lights come on when you turn your wipers on? My state has a law now that lights must be on when wipers are on, but I still see a lot of idiots out there in low-visibility rainy weather with no lights on.
In the Philippines they think they will get better gas mileage. I do my best to avoid driving at night there. They do a lot of incredibly stupid shit. Occasionally you’ll see a red light on the FRONT of a motorcycle. You can’t convince them that riding the clutch is bad.
Since my current job has me driving, in part after dark, I’ve been thinking about this issue quite a bit.
Nearly every day, I see someone driving with their lights off on the stretch of freeway I traverse. In this particular instance, it seems to be, as mentioned, due to a) the highway being fairly well lit, and b) in some cases, drivers are confused because their daytime running lights are on rather than the head/tail lights.
Whenever I’m overtaken by one of these people, I flash my headlights off and on a few times to try to get their attention, but I have yet to see anyone recognize the signal and turn on their lights.
I see this in the morning (I start at 0600).
There is ALWAYS at least 1 vehicle on I-80/ US101 after the Bay Bridge with their tail lights off but headlights on. I figure they think they are fine because they can see and do no know their other lights aren’t on. There is no way to flash any combination of lights to an urban California driver and get then to realize anything; they will get angry and imitate whatever you do.
Flash headlights at slowpokes in the no. 1 lane? If they are doing this in the firstplace, they will not know why you flash your lights.
Flash headlights at an oncoming vehicle to warn them of an accident, po-po or their lights are off? They will switch theirs on high.
Turn signals when turning onto a side street? Not until they actually start the turn. If then.
Some radio stations will remind listeners to turn on their lights when wipers are used. It may be having an effect.
When I take my car in for service, they turn off my automatic headlights. Now that I know this an expect it, it’s not a problem. But the first time, I had no idea my lights weren’t on. The area outside the service center is well lit, and all of my gauges are illuminated whether the lights are on or not. It wasn’t until I pulled into my parking spot at work (only a couple of miles) that I realized I wasn’t lighting up the car in front of me.
In a well-lighted area, I can see someone being oblivious to this for longer distances.
I had a friend who was clearing property, cutting down trees for an hour or so after work each night. He purchased and mounted huge, bright lights (he said they were airplane lights) to his Jeep’s rear bumper. He would leave the vehicle running and light his work area enough to operate his chainsaw.
One night while driving home after a few hours of chainsawing, someone came up close behind him with their bright lights on. He was grumpy and not thinking clearly, so he flipped the toggle and turned on his bright rear facing lights on then off.:eek:
I once had someone right on my bumper with their brights on. I was in a horrible/nasty/angry/noshitgiven mood, so I tapped my brakes. Amazingly, the car didn’t hit me, but it did turn on its flashing cop-lights. I guess I scared the shit out of him, and he yelled quite a bit, but I told him I’d seen a deer about to start across the road and reflexively went for my brakes. He yelled some more, but let me go.
So the cop was tailgating, but got mad at *you *for hitting your brakes. :smack:
I wish they were a lot darker so there wouldn’t be so much light pollution in the sky.
Yikes, reminds me of my time in Jamaica. There are a lot of twisty, windy roads there that are pretty narrow. Cars can really only pass each other when going around turns if they go slowly and carefully. Which they do not. So they have a sort of folk remedy: when getting ready to career into a turn, they honk the horn a couple times. I had gotten used to this system by the time I was in one guy’s taxi and noticed that he wasn’t honking as the other drivers did, although he was driving just as wildly. I nervously asked him why he didn’t honk, and he assured me there was no problem, because he could just listen for the honking of others. :eek:
I later found out from others that he does that to try to provoke a reason to pull people over. It was 3 am and I guess he assumed I was DUI just based on time.
My wife’s car (2012 VW Passat) has daytime running lights all the time, and some kind of headlight sensor that turns the main headlights on and off as needed.
I suppose maybe under certain cloudy conditions, it’s not quite dim enough outside to make the auto-lights come on when maybe others may think they should be on.
OTOH, in my pickup, it’s all manual, so there have been a very few times when I’ve started it up at night in a very well lit parking lot, and then started driving on a very well lit road, only to realize a little later when I see cars with their lights on, that I forgot to turn my own lights on. Usually it’s because it’s well lit enough that I could see the road and gauges without needing the lights on, and I’m preoccupied with something else. Once either of those conditions cease to be, or I notice that my lights are off and everyone else’s are on, I turn mine on.
Automatic headlights mean more people don’t think about their lights at all. More street lighting means they don’t realize their lights aren’t on. I see many cars without headlights on in the evening, not so many in the early morning. Surprisingly, I sometimes see cars with their parking lights on, but not headlights. This is annoying, but not quite as dangerous as no headlights.
I drive with my headlights on all the time. It’s just safer. When I see other drivers without their headlights on, I flicker my lights on and off. Flashing highbeams just pisses drivers off. Switching lights on/off multiple times gets a better response.
Even that can be a problem. I just bought a new truck, and spent the first evening driving around with just my daytime running lights on because in the years between my last truck and the new one, Ford saw fit to reverse the order of all the switches. What I thought was the Auto-on spot was actually the off position.
I did notice my interior lights were off, but attributed that to the also-new-type dimming switch that I also hadn’t figured out yet.
In older cars, the dashboard illumination only comes on when the headlights are on. My whole life I’ve seen people driving with their headlights off at night who could not have helped but notice they can’t see their speedometer, fuel indicator, and other instruments – if they’d looked. So one can reasonably conclude that they’re not just failing to notice because streetlights are bright – they’re actively failing to observe safe driving practices.
On that note, a friend if mine once only noticed that * both* of her headlights had burned out when she approached her house and the street light density decreased.
Part of it is DRLs. The spec was they were 90% as bright as headlights. Since most people can’t tell the difference between 90% DRL & 100% headlights on, they don’t realize that they only have the DRLs on & that they have no driving/taillights.
I left work late one night (2:30-3am); I know my headlights were on because they shown on the wall of the parking garage as I circled up. It had rained so the city streets were wet/glistening. Somehow, in activating my turn signal I must have rolled the lights to parking lights as both are on the same stalk. Between all of the city/building lights & the reflections on the street, I didn’t realize it. I got pulled over; the lights being a suspicion of DUI, given the time of morning. Of course this was the day that I gave a cow-orker a ride home. Didn’t live it down until he moved across country & left the company.
Driving has been improving where I live, but two decades ago it was normal not to turn on lights until it was quite dark. Once I turned mine on at dusk and a cop car coming toward me started swerving back and forth to get my attention. I had to turn my lights off to calm him down!
Worst are wagons drawn by slow tractors after dusk that have no rear reflector at all. :eek: I’ve a story about that, but it belongs in the “Closest you’ve come to death” thread.
Sometimes, it simply doesn’t occur to you, or it’s bright enough that you don’t notice.
I’ve long since defaulted to always leaving my light on in the car. All the cars I’ve owned from the 2000s automatically shut of the lights after about twenty seconds or so after you turn the car off, so there’s no worry of leaving the lights running. And daytime running lights are common enough, so I see no reason not to have my lights on at all times. I also don’t like the “auto” setting because there are times where I feel it’s dark enough or road conditions are such that I would normally drive around with my lights on, but the “auto” setting determines it’s not dark enough for it to trip the lights. So I just don’t trust it and leave them on always.
But back before, sometimes I would start a journey before dusk or in a well-lit place that I simply didn’t notice my lights were off. And even looking at the dashboard, in a brightly lit city like Chicago, I sometimes simply wouldn’t notice. This would happen to me about three or four times a year. Usually, people are good at flashing their high beams at you to let you know, but it’s happened that at times I didn’t even notice until I was on a road with a dark patch on it.
As for dimmers, in my case, it’s not that people are using their high beams. There’s just simply a lot of vehicles on the road right now that have powerful normal beams and whose headlights are positioned higher on their vehicle (and perhaps angled) such that they are irritating as shit and seem to be high beams when they are not. I’ve noticed this with a lot of SUV and truck-type vehicles.
