How many people do you know who don't use the automatic headlights?

I hate DRL. Just to stick it to the man, I drive with my emergency brakes on so the lights won't turn on.

In my opinion it is nothing like a seatbelts. It may work as long as there is just a few vehicles with light on. If everybody is using them you will just ignore them, as there is too many bright points on the streets. That's how people work: if you are overflow with something that should bring your attention, at some point you just adjust to it and stop paying attention to it anymore. In Europe they mandated light during driving at all time, and now they started to abolishing this law.
Lights during day make sens for motorcycles or special vehicles (like emergency units) but only when they are only one to use them. Only then you will pay additional attention to incoming vehicles with light on.
Otherwise it will make sens to equip all cars on the road with bright flashing lights. After all, they should be even more visible then regular headlights.

My mother has the automatic headlights but shuts them off. She had a prior version of the same car (Park Avenue, I think) that they were supposed to shut off automatically but started to not do so, which ran out the battery. She got ticked off and just has the thing disconnected.

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks...signed, Old Dog.

I had them on my old 99 grand marquis, and used them all the time. Never had a dead battery. That car also would turn off any interior/trunk light after a period of time as well.

I have DRL on my 99 suburban. They are ok, but I see a lot of them burn out. My dad's 96 drl's just quit one day. The problem I have with DRL is that too many times I see people driving at night with DRL only - no taillights - and that is a bigger problem than no visibility in the day. So I think if DRL are mandated, then auto lights need to be as well.

Daniel

I have had the auto headlights on my Toyota since 2003. I love them. I never manually turn them on and off.

Now that I have a Mustang, however, I miss that feature. I wish it had that auto headlight feature as well.

one could make the argument that GPSrs take away from peoples' awareness just by the nature of what they purport to do--to show you how to drive to a location. That alone leaves you less aware, as you wait for the voice to tell you to "exit at..." instead of reading all the signs along the way and paying attention to everything around you.

Maybe GPSrs should be banned!

Hey BObDee, how classic of you to take a dump on another thread.

If it's a dumb question why even bother answering?

I used to think you really did contribute to this place. But the more I see you threadcrap all over this place the less I think of you.

It's ironic that a place for automotive gadgets like the GPS would look down on a small innovation like automatic headlights, isn't it?

This is a great question. I travel often enough out of town that I am used to checking if the car has auto-headlights or not. If not, I do remember to turn it on and off.

However, more and more cars automatically turn on the dashlights whether the front lights are on or not, so it's a bit harder to make sure the light is on during dusk.

This is why I think auto-headlights should be available on every single car, like airbags. Either that, or do not turn on the dashlight unless the headlights are on.

Do you even know what forum this in?

I've yet to see auto-headlights come as a mandatory setting where they take away your ability to control the lights manually.

That's the point of this thread. A lot of people I know don't use auto-lights, manually controlling them instead.

I think this is a valid point.

With my car I can set how long the lights stay on after I turn the engine off. I set it for 2 seconds.

Some cars stay on for 30 seconds or more. I would hope that all auto-lights have a manual setting where you can control how long they stay on.

There are too many unsafe drivers that forget to turn on their headlights when it is dark or when using their wipers. Vehicles should all have this feature. The knob can be pulled to the parking light position when you stop outside the Starbucks window.

As a motorcycle rider, I'm considering adding front and rear flashing yellow LEDs, which I'm told are legal, so the cagers will see me.

My GMC has them "on" by default. I physically turn them off as part of starting my truck. I've been driving for over three decades and I can decide when I want my lights on. At dust and when it's raining or when a sign says to turn them on.