There’s just the faintest bit of light coming from the headlights of this VW Squareback that moved into my neighborhood a couple of blocks away recently. It’s going to need a jump to get it started.
So the question that’s been burning in me for almost fifty years, since the first time I had to give a car a jump start for this reason, is why the hell were cars designed so that one could leave the headlights on without the key turned to ON or ACC?
There’s absolutely no reason why anyone would want to leave them on and walk away, right? So why wasn’t the headlight circuit tied into the ignition switch? It would be easy enough to have a non-keyed parking lamp circuit, since in Europe, that used to be required. But nobody used parking lamps in the US anyway. I shudder to thank of the total value of manhours lost over the decades because of dead batteries from lights left on.
Did the battery industry pay off the car industry? Every time a lead acid battery goes dead, it loses like 15-25% of its life span, or so I remember reading once. I can’t think of any other reason. Can you?
My old Subaru, Jetta and current Toyota Previa both turned their lights off no matter how you left the switch. Apparently the technology is available. Maybe the manufacturers like to sell overpriced batteries to the poor smucks that like to leave them on. My Canadian market 92 Jetta used to turn on all the lights instead of just the running lights to get around our day time running light regulations. This was great until the headlight switch broke and the part was no longer available. I paid way to much money for a CDN specific switch only to find out it was the normal one.
I realize that this issue has of course been resolved over time, although it was hardly universal for some time. I’m not up on exactly when various manufacturers finally fixed the problem, but for us old-timers, it was once a pretty universal issue.
The SAAB 99/900 lights go off w/ ignition as well.
Yep…one of the things I liked about my 83 Saab 900.
Very universal. I recall going to a couple of state high school basketball tournaments, circa 1982. It was in a college sports facility, and kids from all over the state attended. It was a fairly large crowd.
I suppose that to reduce the number of kids standing by dead cars in 10 degree weather, they regularly used the PA to announce vehicles with lights left on. It was an almost comical the number of announcements made. After announcing probably the 20th car of the night, the announcer drew out YOUUUR LIIIIGHTS ARRRE OOOOONNNN.
About the same time, I worked at a supermarket carrying out groceries. It was universal Midwestern friendliness for customers to holler out to other customers if they walked away from their cars with the lights on. For those that were missed, we employees would take our turn at the PA and announce to a 40,000 sq foot store that YOUR LIGHTS ARE ON.
One thing did throw off this courtesy. GM’s Twilight Sentinel, a fairly rare auto on / auto off light feature with time delay would trigger some bounce back from the fancy pants folks that had this. It was usually worth ignoring the lights on a Cadillac or a senior Buick or Oldsmobile for a few minutes to see if the lights would go off automatically.
Yes…I remember one time in the 80’s I called out to a woman “your lights are on” as she walked away from her Cadillac Eldorado….she responded “oh…the lights turn off by themselves.” That was the first time I heard about this feature.
I’ve since had cars with this feature including my 2016 Accord but I’ve rarely used it…still afraid of coming out and finding a dead battery I guess.
When I got my 92 Crown Victoria it had Ford’s version and It used to be very common for people to tell me that I left my lights on since that feature was still pretty new for a “lowly” Ford. Since then we have had a number of Ford and Mercury vehicles with them and like you say people have stopped saying anything since it is now so common.
My ’86 (and ’87) Jetta, along with my old ’73 Sport Bug Super Beetle all turn off the headlamps when you turn off the key. But for some reason, the parking lights stay on until you turn the headlamp switch off. If you keep the switch on, the headlamps stay on only after you turn the key on. I guess the reason is a relay so the headlamps go off while using the starter to give it more cranking power.
I recently had to give a family member a jump start recently after I loaned him the ’87 Jetta because he thought all the lights shut off after he parked and saw the headlamps go off, but didn’t notice the parking lights were still on.
The radio works with the key on or off, and I have had the battery go dead in the Jetta when I loaned it out but the user only turned down the stereo, but didn’t switch it off, figuring it would go off when the key is removed. Both Jettas and the Sport Bug were wired this way from the factory.
It’s ironic to me that it’s a VW, as the water cooled VW’s I owned (80’s-early 90’s models) all had the distinction of being the only cars (other than an ’86 Saab, now that I think of it) in which the lights went out when the ignition was shut off. I guess the older air-cooled veedubs weren’t wired the same way?
I always liked that feature in the Golfs and Jettas I owned back then. Ignition off, lights off, but oddly the radio could be played regardless of whether the key was anywhere near the car.
I didn’t do it on my current car, but on several older ones I specifically wired the radio to have a power lead that didn’t involve the key. Useful if I was going to be sitting in the car for a while and didn’t want to leave the key in ACC, or if I was doing something *near* but not *in* the car and wanted to have music available.
It’s also a little less likely to walk away from a car with the radio still playing than with the lights still on.
My 2007 Rabbit leaves the radio on when you turn off the car and/or remove the key, and also lets you turn on the radio upon entry before inserting the key in the ignition switch. It turns off on its own after about 15 minutes to save the battery, although you can turn it right back on if you’re still there.
My 74 superbeetle, the headlights went off with the ignition key. Parking lights stayed on though. It would still drain the battery but over a longer period of time.
Or a headlights-on buzzer. My wife’s damned ’91 Toyota Tercel had no headlights-on buzzer – every car I’ve owned from my ’69 Valiant on up had buzzers, so naturally I killed the battery of her car at least twice while parking at a commuter lot in the winter. I eventually stuck a fluorescent yellow sticker on the steering wheel to remind me.
In my old Bimmer the parking lights will go on w no key but the headlights only in the on position. I never understood why other cars were not so equipped. I guess having access to lights on in all positions makes sense as a safety precaution? Like having it independent of the ignition allows you to take the keys out if you’re using the car’s headlights to illuminate something whilst doing something that would necessitate leaving said vehicle while minimally draining the battery? An average pre-recession Ford, for instance, will run down its battery with lights on within 20 min in the ACC or ON positions, as I’ve found out the hard way…
Volvo 240 lights went off with key, Element they stay on (supposed to be a warning beeper, but they are all disabled (not easy in an E because the beeper is sealed into the cluster, so to speak)).
So not really progress. Agree that it should be that way, but the first time someone gets slammed on the side of a road it would be back. Also wish US had rear fog lights, I used them on the Volvo a lot.
Parking lamps were required in some parts of the US, but an awfully long time ago. I remember my great uncle once telling me that when he bought his house (in suburban Philadelphia in the 1950s) he had to install parking lamps on his Nash because his township required them for parking on the street after dark.
But I’ve never heard anyone else share a similar story, so it couldn’t have been common, even back then.
When I bought a Saab 900, I really liked the feature of having the lights shut off with the ignition, and wondered why other cars didn’t to the same.
A relay is required, because you don’t want all of the current draw of the headlights passing through the ignition switch.
Relays cost money. Every penny a manufacturer spends a relay is money off the bottom line.
Recall, for example, how early Corvairs handled oddly, which could have been largely overcome by a $4 part, but the beancounters said “no”.
I know,…but it’s such an unsatisfactory answer given all the grief it caused over the many decades. 🙁
Unsatisfactory but really quite plausible given the industry. Lots of bonehead moves in trying to save anywhere from 0.05 cents to $10 which in the end either caused headaches or deaths.
That is such BS. If it adds $4 to the price of the car, put it in the sticker. People who carped back then about paying extra for the Corvair roll bar or the shoulder belts were going to go to the cheapest car anyway.
As an experiment, I searched thru my copy of American Cars 1960-1972 for the base prices of the stripper model of each of them:
1968 Corvair $2243 (the Chevy II was $2222 btw)
1968 Dart $2323
1968 Falcon $2252
That roll bar would have made no difference, the Corvair would still be the cheapest car, except for the Chevy II.
I’d say that not putting the headlight draw through the ignition switch was probably one of the reasons that they originally did that. At that time a relay would have probably been much more expensive relatively than they are today.
Also hazards were something that came later and when they did come around they were often optional on lower cost models for a number of years. So being able to leave the lights on was probably considered a safety feature to be able to leave them on if you are stuck on the side of the road.
So I think even though the technology was eventually was there to build an ignition switch and or relay to do the task more economically it had been done that way for so long no one really thought that it needed to change.
I have a theory, but it is full of pitfalls and room for poking holes.
If a person’s property is such you have to park some distance from the front door, the ability to leave the headlights on allows illumination for the walk to the door while having keys in hand to unlock the house.
Both sets of my grandparents have houses that fit this description – one will park a good 75′ from the door.
In turn, this ability creates a lot of unintended consequences.
I could argue against my own statement as it’s likely nothing purposely provided by the manufacturer , although the rural/urban split way back when was likely much different than it is now. With Henry Ford being a farm boy, that’s what nudged me toward thinking this.
Haven’t you seen the scenes in movies where a nighttime event (a fight, for example) is illuminated by a ring of cars with their headlights on?
Yeah, probably doesn’t happen all that much in the real world.
The more frustrating one is when you drain your battery by leaving the dome light on. It’s small, but leave that sucker on for a long workday or overnight, and you’re going to have trouble getting that car started back up.
There was a discussion on the other site about how a person drained the small battery on their Prius and the car wouldn’t start. They did it with a dome light. It rather surprised me that something as advanced as the Prius didn’t have some sort of software or relay to shut off the interior lights after a certain time. My craptastic J-cars have had that for 20+ years!
Yes leaving the dome light on has gotten me a dead battery the last couple of times. It tends to happen when I’m going back and forth between cars, both with courtesy light delay feature. You look back, see the dome on and think nothing of it. Not sure how many but quite a few newer cars have a “battery saver” feature to prevent a dead battery when you leave something on.
Headlamp on for me is hard to miss at night. Never need to drive with lights on during day but I can see how you would in a place like Oregon and not notice headlamps on when you get out of the car.
My Cougar has autolamps, which besides coming on automatically will stay on for a period of time adjustable by a knob on the dash. It’s actually pretty useful in the dark if you park facing the direction you’ll be walking towards, you get where you’re going without tripping on ice or getting stabbed by a lurking thug, and they turn off by themselves, win win. I’ve also turned on the headlights alone a time when the power went out while I happened to be in the garage, I would have probably knocked over every last shelf and toolbox I had in there getting to the door and getting a flashlight from the house if it weren’t for that.
Better solution would be adding a feature to shut the lights off after an extended period (30+ minutes?), if you forgot about them. Most healthy batteries won’t drain to the point of no-starts unless the lights were left on for several hours, and with the amount systems tied into central body control modules in modern cars it would be a no brainier to add such a feature, keeping the freedom to turn them on without a key.
My Crown Vic has those also (probably the same switch even) but the delay adjustment is broken, so they stay on for the longest delay you can set. It’s got to be at least 45 seconds if not 60+. Still nice to have, but it’s a bit of a leap of faith to walk away from the car with the headlights on and trust that they will, in fact, turn off! It’s also gotten a couple of “hey you left your lights on” comments from would-be-helpful folks.
Well if it helps Fords headlight circuit is essentially “off” when autolamps are engaged, it’s module is a bypass, and if the module were to fail(it’s basically a fancy relay) the lights would go off anyway.
I thought all modern cars had the auto-shutoff these days that would shut off dome lights or whatever if the battery was draining.
My car has that but I’m not sure if it shuts off all lights or just the interior lights (don’t really want to test it to find out LOL)
No lots of late model cars don’t have the battery saver feature still, even though Ford and GM have been doing it since the 90’s. And yes on all of the Fords that I’ve seen that will shut off the interior lights will also shut off the exterior lights as well.
“My Cougar has autolamps, which besides coming on automatically will stay on for a period of time adjustable by a knob on the dash.”
Until the switch burns itself up. 🙂 Every 80s-90s Ford with Autolamp that I have had has eventually required a new switch. They are *not* fun to replace.
I inadvertently prevented that scenario on mine by using a relay harness, so the switch(es) have very little current going through them. Must have upgrade on 80s-90s Fords, helps with the rather abysmal brightness of the thin composite lights.
Tell me more about this potential brightness upgrade?
Pretty simple: you re-wire the headlights so they are powered right from the battery or alternator, via a relay. The stock headlight switch and wiring is simply used to power said relay. Before-and-after tests show a very noticeable improvement in brightness, testing with a multimeter shows a 1-1.5v increase (about 10%!) at the bulb.
Rick Ehrenberg (Mopar Action) has been writing about it for a long time.
Yup, john got it. The old headlight circuits now only serve to activate the relays, and the power to the bulbs comes direct from the battery through them. Pretty simple circuit to DIY but there are aftermarket companies who make universal ones for reasonable prices.
Funny you’d mention this. I’ve got automatic timed shutoff too, in addition to a feature that automatically turns the lights on if the wipers are switched on, and one that activates auto-on at dusk. There’s some kind of time delay for the wiper/light activator so the lights don’t come on until maybe the 5th cycle of the wipers or the equivalent amount of time if they’re on delay. These past few cold mornings I’ve noticed a bit of “confusion”, as switching on the wipers to clear mist may cause the headlights to flicker on and off as the combination of auto-on with wipers and the low light of early morning seem to conflict with one another, causing the lights to not “know” whether to be on or off. This in turn has on more than one occasion also caused the wipers to fail to “park” properly on shutoff as the electrical confusion fires through the system. There’s of course no interior switchgear to override the on-with-wipers feature, but I’ve now taken to switching the headlights on and off manually and keeping the switch out of the “auto” detent, thus overriding the auto shutoff and on-at-dusk features.
I love me some technology, but when techno-alzheimers starts creeping up on aging relays and their synapses start misfiring I start to lose trust. This kind of stuff play havoc with my Luddite vs. Technocrat bi-polarity.
Does your Cougar have the auto dimmer feature as well? I know the early MN-12’s had this option and i think the early Mark VIII’s did also, but I’ve never been sure what year Ford dropped this feature
No, the only auto dimming option was for the rear view mirror on my 94(mine didn’t come with it but I added it). Auto dimming headlights got dropped from the option list after the interior redesign, possibly before, and I’m not sure about the Mark VIII but the Mark VII had them. That feature seemed to be more common to Fords in the 80s.
I don’t recall an auto dimmer on my VIII, but it was over 10 years ago that I owned the car, plus mine was late-mid model run (a ’96). Orangechallenger had one until more recently, maybe he can answer the question?
When I had had my 2003 Saturn L for a couple of months, one evening I forgot to turn off the headlights, but I implicitly assumed that they’d go off when I killed the engine. I got the warning chime, but on this car the chime can stand for a number of things, so I didn’t give it much thought. I saw that the lights were on, but I thought they’d go off after a couple of minutes.
I came back to a dead battery and had to get a jump. I wasn’t expecting this in a car of such recent design.
My ’91 Grand Marquis had a rotary control around the light switch that controlled how long the headlights would stay on and would shut them off automatically
Even as late as 1987, Alfa Romeo’s sparkling new and ever-so-modern Milano still had some electric circuits stay live with the ignition off. On of those was the cigarette lighter, which kinda makes sense, but the headlights? I took just a bit more than a year off from Milano ownership and forgot all about that … until I drove my recent acquisition to a lunch date with an old friend, just to show the car off, and neglected to turn off the headlights. When we went to our cars, my Italian-car-skeptic friend had a big laugh when mine turned up dead, after just a little over an hour.
My theory is “Because that’s how we have always done it.” Grandpa’s Model A had a direct switch for lights, and so Dad’s 1959 and Junior’s 1978 got one too. And most of the time, it was fine. The headlight buzzer was a cheap (if annoying) solution in the 70s. (And wasn’t that one due to governmental prodding?) The modern autolamp systems seem to have resolved the issue.
*Except* when you have one car with and one without. It makes you forget to turn off the lights in the non-autolamp car almost every time. My only exception is the Miata, with the huge headlight doors that stay up if lights are on.
My 2012 Sedona simply turns the lights off when you turn off the key, no matter where you headlamp switch is set. I like it just fine.
I think that you are right, that is the way they started out long ago. If the customers were not demanding a change, they would not bother. The addition of an alarm was a good change.
It’s worse for me–both cars will shut the lights off automatically (autolamp on the Ford, on the Kia they turn off with the key) but only the Crown Vic will turn them back on. So I don’t have a problem with leaving lights on, but I *do* have a problem with forgetting to turn the Kia’s headlamps on at dusk or in a well-lit parking lot. Rather hazardous, I know, but I’m just not in practice with it as I drive that car only once or twice a week…
I agree that it was one of those it was always that way kind of things.
Yeah I’ve been caught several times by having both w/ and w/o auto lamps. specifically having Panthers with it for decades and then getting a P71 that didn’t have it and since it was a P71 the warning chime was seriously silenced. Thankfully it has battery saver and more than once I’ve come back to the car, started it up and had the lights come on.
Late model Chryslers have an auto shutoff for lights left on for (I think) more than 15 minutes after the ignition is cut off.
Personally, I like being able to turn lights on without a key. There have been times when Ive needed to turn headlights on and the car wasn’t running. That said, I have unintentionally left lights on after shutting the car off, but I always take a glance at the car when walking away just for that reason, plus it gives me one last look at my car.
The only car I’ve ever owned where the lights went off with the ignition was a 1997 Fiat Punto, and I seem to recall that later Fiats I drove while working in car rental did the same thing. (unlike any other car in the fleet)
I always assumed it was for safety, so if you have to park the car where you’re afraid it will be hit in the dark, you can leave the lights on – but then why not have the horn work too?
In the UK anyway, it is legal to park facing the “wrong” way on the roadside, but if you do so after dark, legally you must leave the sidelights on as the rear reflectors won’t be visible to oncoming traffic.
I remember my father’s ’87 Volvo 760 had headlights that turned off when the key was off, I thought that was just genius.
But as I’m sure Paul is well aware, the TSX only allows the headlights to turn off with the key if the lights are on the ‘auto’ setting, which I don’t trust as much as my own brain…so I hear the ‘lights on’ chime at the end of many a late fall commute when exiting my own TSX wagon.
My car defaults to the auto setting. One can turn off the lights, which defeats the day time running lights, but when the car is restarted it returns to the auto default setting.
My Focus won’t let me run the headlights unless the switch is On and it has occasionally annoyed the crap out of me when I wanted to illuminate something ahead of me while parked. I mean, it’s not the end of the world really, I just switch the car to On. I’m just easily annoyed.
Arriving at a jobsite one time the manager asked if my lights turned off automatically. To which I replied Yes after 6 or 7 hours they do. That was my 69 510. The ignition key was on the left side near the light switch and usually my knukles hit the switch while reaching for the key. I have big hands. It became a habit to push the light switch in while shutting off the car.
I think the more important question is Why do modern cars turn only the dashboard lights on when it gets dark outside? Why not all the lights that are necessary. It would be so very simple to correct this. Every night I see people driving around blissfully unaware that their lights are off. Dashboards glowing in their faces.
My “modern” car is a 2001 Subaru, whose dashboard lights up only when the headlights are on. The dash lights give a very modest glow, never enough to interfere with the driver’s ability to see out, but a further refinement is that the overhead digital clock also dims quite a bit. This is nice, except for those days when nasty weather makes headlights mandatory, but the daylight is still strong enough to render the clock’s numbers invisible … and I’m on my way to an important appointment.
I believe that on the little knob that you can use to dim the dash lights, you can turn it the other way (to the right) past the hard detent and then it locks the dash and clock lights on high, making them visible during the day. The first time you get into it at night after that you will want to turn it to the left again as otherwise it’s too bright.
The ones I’m familiar with seeing a lot of people driving around w/o their lights on and the illuminated dash are Toyotas and they light up the dash when the key is on because they are at least in part a display rather than traditional gauges.
my 93 ranger used to have a chime of some sort to remind you to turn off the headlights
it stopped working a long time ago . The problem is the headlights and the wipers on
on a rainy day the law now says if the wipers are on the headlights have to be on
so I have to remember getting out in the rain to push that damned headlights button in
good luck with that at least its a stick So I can at get rolling and pop the clutch
if necessary But I don’t think I ever heard that if you run down the battery that you
shorten it’s life
Running down a lead battery does some damage to the plates. Lead batteries are designed to be kept mostly fully charged.
Actually the problem in modern cars is that the dash lights come on when the vehicle is started. That, in combination with daytime running lights, is why folks don’t realize their tail lights aren’t on.
I AFAIK a few companies always turned off the lights with the key (Subaru). On others they did if you had the auto light option and had it on (Ford, GM. My 96 Explorer had this, but so did a Chevy Cruse I just rented last month.) Others are still the old way (our recent Hondas and probably the more basic versions of most GMs and Fords).
But what I find much stranger in VWs is that they let you turn on the radio with the key out. My the toddler (now college student) son killed the battery in my cousin’s Westy that way when we visited them once – he always loved to pretend to drive, even at age 2. (And he insisted on a manual transmission for his first car 🙂 )
maybe after 40 years i’m just used to it. having a car that turned the lights off with the ignition would seem odd to me. i kinda like having control over the lights independent of the ign switch.
now, if i were a hit man or drug dealer waiting in a dark alley on a cold night running the heater where concealment is a concern, i’d hate to have a car with DRLs
In the vehicles I have or had with DRLs they don’t light the lights until you put it in gear or release the parking brake on the one with the manual trans.
Feature interlock to the ignition was sort of progressive. I imagine even early radios had to be shut off separately. A friend’s folks had a loaded ’64 DeVille, and about the only things you could not jack with without a key was the radio and maybe the wipers. LOTS OF FUN for 9 year olds.
It seemed like it was the norm for wipers and radios to shut off with the ignition by at least the mid ’60s on most American cars. Wipers were kind of an odd pick here, annoying when they parked in mid sweep and you had to turn the key to get them down and off. Annoying to have them fire off on start up if they were still on.
I think the lights may have been separate to avoid plunging the world into darkness upon shut off – with no option to avoid it. Not a big deal in your garage, but in a rural field or something, it was mighty dark. The only real solution was a switch with an option for time delay, which GM did offer by the late ’60 in the form of optional Twilight Sentinel. But, that was the province of loaded high end cars – people just weren’t that interested in it.
I recall the ’75 Civic a friend’s dad had as an Old’s dealer loaner allowed just about EVERYTHING to run without a key / interlock. Lots of fun for 11 year old boys to run the wipers, lights, signals, radio, etc. in the driveway.
When I was little, I remember noticing when power windows stopped working without the key turned in the ignition.
There are stories about kids killing the batteries in parked Torsion-Level Packards and Clippers by bouncing the suspension up and down until the screw motors drained it.
Had it happen to me a few times with the older cars when I first started driving. I think my ’96 Ford Escort was the first car with an audible alarm if I turned the car off and left the headlights still on. My Focus also has that, if I turn the car off and open the driver’s door the alarm goes off to remind me. Has saved me a dead battery a couple of times.
Why most cars didn’t have this 40 years ago is beyond me, it’s not rocket science.
I had a 1970s car which had a key-in warning when you opened the driver door, but no headlights-on warning. So I added one. It took a length of wire, a 35-cent diode, and two solderless connectors. And the car’s electrical wiring manual (Chilton’s was not good enough).
My circuit used the same buzzer for both warnings.
My headlights on reminder was a bit more low tech. If I had to run the headlights and it wasn’t dark I kept a clip clothespin on the visor. When the lights went on, the clothespin got moved to the doorhandle. When you tried to open the door, your hand would touch the clothespin first, reminding you to shut off your lights.
Because there were two ways of handling this, direct switching via the ignition switch and adding a relay. Both would require low gage cabling to withstand heat, and the relay, budget buster!
OEM bean counters would kill their mother just to save a nickel in variable cost.
Careful what you wish for! I would be tickled if my ’07 Accord would let me leave the lights on with the key out. Instead, the car has been programmed to think it knows what I wanted and meant to do. Turn the headlamps or even just the parking/tail lights on with the key out, and they turn themselves off after a brief delay. Turn them back on, and they turn themselves off again after a brief delay. Want the parking lights on because you’re loading or unloading the car in a narrow, dark street and don’t want to leave the key in it? Tough. Want to use the headlamps to illuminate what you’re doing somewhere in front of the car for more than about 15 seconds, but you have a hard-and-fast rule that the ignition key never gets left in the car without the driver? Tough. Want to change the programming so it aligns more closely with what you want? Tough.
My car has to let me know if I leave the engine on, but get out of the car with the key in my pocket. If lights are on (not sure about headlights) they get turned off after about 10 minutes I think (at least the trunk lights go off).
I am glad that I can’t lock the keys in the car. I can set it up to lock the doors when I leave with the key, but this is not useful when the car is in the garage at home.
I agree, you can’t lock your keys in the car if they aren’t in the car so removing the key and immediately sticking it in my pocket is my normal MO. I worked with a guy that it seemed like at least once a month he would take a car back out to the lot and lock the keys in it, though thankfully never running, at least when I was around. So it became my norm to always roll down a window when you need to run the engine to do things like set the idle or timing or check the charging system. So when it comes time to start the car and then get out and scrape the windows I’m always hesitant to shut that door even though I know there is another set of keys in the house.
There certainly are times when I’ve used the headlights to light an area for a few minutes, just two weeks ago in fact.
My car only requires the key to be in the car since its really only an electronic device that I put in my pocket. If I forget to put the “key” in my pocket and push the start/stop button, the car posts an error message stating that the “key is missing.
I have never left my lights on yet, but I did have a bad habit of leaving the keys in the ignition and locking the door for a bit about 5 years ago. What broke me from that was spending 30 minutes in a freezing Abilene TX mall parking lot using the handle from a cheap plastic mop bucket to try and work the linkage in the door. I did not have a coat on. Temp was 21 degrees. With a 20 mph wind out of the north.
At least the car wasn’t on. I’ve done that…pulled up in front of the library while I was in college intending to drop some books in the return drop box. Didn’t turn the car off as I was about 10 feet away from the box, but for some reason, I hit the door lock switch as I stepped out. Oops. Plus I was kind of low on gas, and in a no parking zone.
With nothing useful at hand I had to call AAA and they sent someone out to unlock the car. Thankfully I didn’t run out of gas or get a ticket. At least it wasn’t a cold day…
My ’05 Chevy will not let the driver’s door lock if the key is in the ignition, whether running or not. If you hit the door lock button, it will lock all the doors, then immediately unlock the driver’s door. However, you CAN lock it with the keys in (running or not) with the remote. I guess it makes sense, because if you have the remote with you, you can unlock it. But what if YOUR remote is in the truck (on your keyring in the ignition), but your wife locked it with HER remote before wandering into Hobby Lobby for 4 blissful hours of holiday knick-knack shopping, while you just walked into Sears to quickly exchange that broken Craftsman screwdriver?
I always drive with all my lights on for safety(not just drls) and one of the things that endeared my stripper 06 caravan to me was if you left the headlite switch on it would automatically kill the lites after three minutes and they would come back on as soon as you started it. I think the only time I used the headlite switch in it in the five years I owned it was if I loaned it out and it came back with the lites off.
lol…the flip side of that tho was went the buzzer for my lites quit working on one of my cutlass cieras. I figured I wasn’t going to spend money on a buzzer but after killing the battery three times in the same week I had no qualms taking it to the garage and getting a new one installed!
In my current fleet, headlights need to be handled three different ways.
87 Mercedes totally manual lighting-individual responsibility required
06 Ford Explorer, automatic DRLs-gotta remember to turn on the lights for tail lights and markers.
05 Chevy Silverado, fully automatic lights-lights are on when driving day or night, I never have to touch the switch, but I go through a lot of light bulbs.
Personally, I like the Mercedes system the best.
I just want to know why several manufacturers decided it would be a good idea to allow the dashboard lights to be on whilst the outside lights were off, which seems to be the norm now. And because of it, a night rarely goes by without me passing a car with its lights off in pitch darkness. Not surprising, as a dash lit like a Christmas tree convinces many drivers the outside lights must be on too, especially since most have daylight running lights that provide some forward illumination (but do nothing for the sides or rear of the car). Can anything be done about this?
Agreed. Draining the battery leaving the lights only bruises an individual’s ego, but this newfound practice by automakers illuminating the gauges 100% of the time is a genuine danger to everyone on the road. I see a couple cars a night with no taillights, just DRLs and the dash glow reflected off an oblivious driver. Ten years ago I rarely saw a car driven without the lights on at night.
So true. It’s utterly idiotic. I see it all the time.
This ties (with red rear turn signals) for the № 1 spot on my lighting gripe list.
Mine was, is, and remains DRLs. They should be prohibited, and all cars with them should be required to have them disabled.
Well, that’s ignorant. The large preponderance of evidence is that daytime running lights actually, really, and significantly reduce the chance of being in a crash. They are required equipment in Canada since ’90, throughout Europe since ’11, in Nordic countries since the mid-’70s, and in a large and growing number of other countries throughout the world because they are effective and cost-effective. The safety benefit from properly-done DRLs is real, but some implementations of DRLs introduce safety-negative effects that can reduce or countervail the safety benefit.
Most arguments against DRLs, whether or not their exponents realise or admit it, are arguments against the problems caused by particular implementations of DRLs, not against the concept itself. The Europe-and-rest-of-world DRL regulation is thoughtfully written and just about entirely devoid of bad provisions. The US/Canada reg is far too lax (and automakers like it that way) and so we get DRLs that cause glare, obscure turn signals, foment improper nighttime use of lights, and other problems.
But this is the internet, and there’s a handful of sites with knownothing self-proclaimed experts blathering about how evil and stupid and lousy and rotten and smelly and hazardous and awful and dumb and putrid DRLs are. There was similarly fatuous bleating about the CHMSL (central 3rd brake light), only that was in the mid-late ’80s so it was largely confined to the photocopied newsletters and crackerbarrel bitchfests of car clubs whose members were absolutely convinced that the pinnacle of automotive rectitude was the 1967 Ford (or whatever) and it had been all downhill toward hell in a handbasket since then. By the time the internet came along to amplify this kind of kook, pretty much nobody objected to the CHMSL any more, but they eventually got an opportunity for another tantrum in re DRLs.
As a motorcyclist, DRLs are dangerous to me. They eliminate my only visibility advantage: a motorcycle’s always-on headlight.
That’s a popular notion amongst motorcyclists, but so is “Loud pipes save lives!” and “A brake light that blinks every time I apply the brakes will reduce the chance of a cager hitting me!” and “A headlight modulator flashing my headlight all the time will reduce the chance of a cager turning across traffic into me!”. All of these ideas have been studied rigorously. None of them is true. The world doesn’t work the way “common sense” makes it seem like it should; that’s why we use science to address questions like this.
Motorcyclists are very vulnerable in traffic. Fortunately, we’re finally getting some good answers to the very difficult question of how to make motorcyclists effectively conspicuous in traffic and reduce their involvement in crashes. And we’re finally (at long last) able to give motorcyclists the light they need to see and be seen adequately; in the past the combination of low-efficacy incandescent light sources, severe constraints on the size of motorcycle lights, and small-capacity charging systems meant motorcyclists virtually never had anything close to what was needed. LEDs and the associated optical technologies have broken those constraints, and that’s all to the good.
And the advances are not just confined to new bikes, either; there are some astoundingly good, vastly safer new adaptive headlamps that fit standard round headlamp buckets and solve the problem of seeing distance going to zero when you bank into a turn, for example.
You should try out for the Olympics, with those leaps you are making.
All motorcycles should be required to have unaltered factory exhaust systems, with the noiseboxes seized and destroyed, and the owners charged for the disposal.
No leaps here—I didn’t suggest you believe in loud pipes or blinky headlamps or blinky brake lights, I just pointed out that the idea you espouse (DRLs on cars and trucks are dangerous to you as a motorcyclist) is like those other ideas in that they’re popular amongst motorcyclists and not grounded in fact.
I don’t too much mind red rear turn signals, IF they are a separate bulb from the brake light. But I do not like red “combination” stop-tail-turn lamps.
See http://acarplace.com/cars/turn-signals/ .
Agreed. Happened just last week on my way home from work on HWY 41 towards Green Bay. Small asian car putting’ along in the right lane with no taillights on. Got close and noticed front lights and gauge lights were on. Guy was oblivious. If I wasn’t on a 4-lane highway I may have quickly flashed the brights. My peeve is people not turning their lights on when its raining or foggy. A lady I used to work with always said if you need to use your wipers you need to have your lights on. Now that I have a true commute I totally agree. With all these gray/silver cars they disappear in such conditions. They think their lights automatically turn on, but they usually don’t. If they do, many times the taillights are not on and that’s bad news if you happen to be behind someone on the highway when its pouring. New law in Wisconsin requires lights to be turned on when visibility is ?? miles, but I have yet to hear someone being stopped for that. Until people get stopped I don’t think anything will change. I get on my wife’s case about this too. Turn them on/turn them off.
In Arkansas and Missouri, state law is: wipers on, lights on. My ’05 Avalanche has automatic headlights, but sometimes there is enough ambient light for them not to come on, even though visibility itself is terrible. Usually, in those conditions, I just kick on the fog lamps, because that automatically kicks on the parking, and taillights, and with that plus the DRLs, that’s usually enough light for me to be seen by other drivers.
My car does not do that: either you leave the car in auto mode or you turn off all lights or you can turn on the parking lights or you can turn on the headlights. However, the dash/gauge display is electronic and always lit if the car is on. My high/low beams are automatic too, unless I turn that off by selecting high or low. I find that some drivers don’t seem to know when their headlights are on bright.
My dad’s old car, a 2004 Toyota Corolla Verso, had an even worse dash light feature: not only would the lights be very bright with the headlamps off, they would be dimmed when the headlamps were switched on. And there was no way to change those settings.
My dad’s ’70 Plymouth Fury had a timer on the lights that would shut them off 10 minutes after the ignition was switched off. Also my brother’s 2016 Grand Cherokee has a huge infotainment center that is bright as hell at night. I can’t understand how he drives with it.
honestly I think it was mostly because the headlamps were run on their own circuit, and they did it to keep too many high-current circuits out of the ignition switch.
now, with the ubiquity of DRLs and how lighting is typically controlled by the BCM, it’s trivial to have auto-off lights.
I know my ’98 Suburban and ’05 Avalanche both have BCM programming that will turn off all electrical loads (except the power port/cigarette lighter?) after 10-15 minutes. However, that has its own drawbacks: the interior lights in the trailer I use for hauling band gear to and from gigs are wired to the taillights. Nothing more frustrating than to be loading the trailer at 2:00 AM only for the interior lights to shut off. Always happens when your hands are full and you’re trying to get everything stacked just right, too And the ’05 has automatic headlamps with a courtesy timer (programmable for 0-10 minutes) before turning them off after the key is switched off. Occasionally I forget to turn off the headlights in the company vehicle, because I’m so used to not worrying about it.
One of my pet peeves is people who drive in the dark with their lights off, because their daytime running lights are actually the headlights, rather than a separate, specialized lamp, and they don’t seem to realize that just because their headlights are on, that doesn’t necessarily mean their taillights are on. They’re fun to run up on at 75 mph at night on the interstate. But, since their dash lights usually won’t work unless the headlight switch is on either, it begs the question: how do they know how fast they’re going?
They do it with dedicated DRLs, too—especially in cars with dashboards lit day or night, which these days is most of them.
My last four GM cars (Buicks and one Oldsmobile 98) have had “twilight sentinel” and the lights have never failed to turn on or off at the time they are set for. My latest car is now nearly fifteen years old. I do not turn headlights on or off manually. Nor do I lock doors or start rain sensing windshield wipers manually. Some may call my standards low, but I love driving expensive GM cars!