Getting day run headlights on a US Gen III

There are several threads on this and it is not as easy as you might think. I am sure the search feature will bring up the threads.

I am interested in the basis for your statement that Toyota has given up a lot of safety. I fully understand that when SOME people started driving with their headlights on it caught everyone's attention and so it did make a difference. Now that half the cars in the world have their headlights on, I don't even notice them and I doubt that it has the slightest safety effect. Is there any current study that supports the safety claims? Just curious.

 

Me too. I noticed that when you lock the car by pressing the remote twice, the lights go off. Why not just leave the headlights on in order to get DRL ?

 

Doesn't seem to be problem, I usually leave the headlight switch on and my prius automatically turnsoff the lights after some time when the car is turned off. Seems like its already programmed in the car.

 

I use day time headlights too, but I appreciate having a switch that turns them on and off because sometimes I don't want them on.

Take your car to the dealer and tell them to set the headlight delay to zero seconds. Then you can just leave the switch on all the time, the lights will go out as soon as you open the driver's door with the car shut off, they will came on again as soon as you go to the ready mode. It actually works that way now but it takes them 30 seconds to go out because that's the default setting.

 

The difference is that true DRLs are not 100% intensity of the full headlights.

 

That's true! ^^ It just uses half of it's power.

 

I turn my lights on when get in the
car and turn them off when I get
out of the car!! On my wifes 2010
Honda Element you can't turn the
daytime running lights off! I had to pull the bulbs!
They are there own bulb so they can be unhooked.
I Still need to take my car in for recall and custom setting !!

 

Like the car it replaced, I turned on my headlights at the dealership and have never turned them off. In the Subaru, they turned on and off with the ignition, with my 2009 Prius, they turned on with the Ready Button and off once it it is shut down, when I open the driver's door. On the 2010, either front door works, and the default is 30 seconds after the door opens, although the dealer can make it 0 seconds after a front door opens.

 

I agree that the usefulness of DRL and the high mounting brake light has gone once every car has them.
The studies that claimed the safety improvement were done when the modified cars for the report were the only ones that stands out in the crowd. As you said they are hardly noticeable nowadays, basically the studies were faulted without considering what happens after the mandated implementation.

 

I will still believe that the high mounted brake light is a safety feature. There are many times when it is the only indication that a car once removed from the car immediately in front of me has started braking and I want to know that as soon as possible, but I think that headlights on in clear daytime weather is nonsense as a safety device, unless you are on a road that is parallel to another road and could be mistaken for a one way lane.

 

If you really want your car to stand out for safety, buy a yellow car. In a congested highway, I notice yellow cars a mile away.

 

There are countless times when I don't see a vehicle as soon as I should due to lack of headlights, typically around dusk or inclement weather. So anecdotally, I believe DRLs do/did increase safety, simply because some people are too damned stupid to turn their own lights on when conditions require.

The high mounted brake light is great.. except when it doesn't work. And this happens far too often, again anecdotally.

 

The other reason I would like to go to a true DRL solution instead of the auto-off is the interior lighting intensity. With a true DRL, the dash/interior/NAV illumination would remain at full-brightness and then dim when the exterior illumination comes on.

I don't know what the duty cycle is for the rheostat which controls the dashboard illumination intensity.

 

I don't think anyone is against automatic headlights, which would turn on when visibility is diminished. The question started out being can we get day run headlights and degenerated into a question as to whether day run headlights have any value at all.