How to turn on the headlights, a detailed step-by-step guide.

I funny and wonderful read! Thanks!

 

Up here day time running lights come on automatically (maybe as soon as you shift outa park); there's no turning them on/off the light stalk. So yeah up here it's as you remember and prefer: off/parking/on, and a fourth option: automatic. The latter turns 'em on/off depending on ambient light, and will shut them off when the car's turned off (after a delay, default is 30 seconds IIRC).

I'm old-school, so never use that last setting. Nor the parking lights only setting either, just too easy to forget and drive off without headlights. I think with parking lights only you still get the (falsely) reassuring headlight on icon on the dash.

One time we rented a car in the States, the light switch was a dial on the dash. Spent a solid 10 minutes trying to find it. On a Chrysler 300.

 

At least you got the parking lights on with the DRLs.
I regularly see people on my way home with just the DRLs on. You can tell its DRLs because their tail lights are off. I guess a fuse is blown, and they are driving around without a lit dashboard too.

With the Outback, Camry, and Sonic, the switch was off, auto, parking, and headlights. Auto had DRLs on, but it might have been possible to turn them off in the settings. I don't recall how the switch was set on the Prius or Matrix, but they had the light sensor. The Matrix seemed to have no way of turning off the DRLs.

The Sonic had a spring in the switch, so it turned back to auto after turning things off. Wanted the lights off, had to turn them off every thing the car started. GM has lobbied the NHTSA to make DRL mandatory in the US like they are in Canada.

I just leave things on auto now, unless there is rain or fog not dark enough to trigger the lights on. Didn't cars use to have a separate on light for the parking lights?

 

… assuming it is 2021 or earlier. If I have not mistaken, Canada has a new law for 2022 vehicles with “always on” tail lights as well to deal with “phantom cars” - people who drive with DRLs at night and no tail lights.

My PiP has 4 headlight settings - OFF, Parking, ON, and Auto. I almost always leave it on Auto and it does its thing well (and I believe there are sensitivity settings that can be played with, which I haven’t touched in a long time). The only time I manually go to ON is if I want to forced them on at dawn or dusk, or during inclement weather, etc.

(Is it weird every time I hear “Blame Canada” I think of South Park? )

 

Not on my 2010, and I suspect it's still the case. Maybe @Tideland Prius will comment. Basically, if I have the light stalk set to off, as soon as I start driving, I've got just the high beams, at reduced brightness, no parking lights, brake lights only light when you step on brakes.

You'll frequently see people driving thus around here, just the reduced brightness highbeams lit, in the dead of night. Apparently the lit up dash is still bright enough to sucker them in to thinking their head lights are on. Especially when there's good street lights, and you don't notice reduced brightness. From behind they're pretty much black..

See a lot of what I say overlaps with @Sarge. Concur about South Park too...

 

Well, Subarus retained exactly that until pretty recently as I recall. And I recall that it was an override switch. You could get parking lights on by twisting the left stalk one click, but they would cut off when you shut down the ignition. If you hit the rocker switch on top of the steering column, it would override and put the parking lights on via B+.

The oldest car I've owned was a 1958 and its headlight switch was combined with the parking light switch, as was everything after.

 

For a change of pace, 58 V-Dub (first car I drove, with learner's license):

 

Nice, I had a '59.

 

It is actually more complicated than the OP has mentioned. I think it varies between the models of the PP, but he indicates he has a 2005 Prius. There are two rotary switches on the stalk, and the inner one is used to turn the fog lights on or off. Then there is another switch on the dash, left of the steering wheel next to the HUD switch that turns the automatic high beams on or off. And if you turn the rotary switch to AUTO and press the high beam switch, the lights will come on when it gets dark and go off when you turn off the car and automatically dim when you approach another car. I did have to RTFM to learn this as I was wondering why the lights seemed so dim when the wife was driving.

 

Should have quoted the OP there I guess.

DRLs are pretty much standard on cars in the US, but their use is not mandatory. Cars without auto headlights, like the OP, can easily have the DRLs on without the parking lights. Even with auto equipped it can happen. Noticed the lights dim when driving with my aunt. Her friend was driving the car earlier , and had switched the lights off from auto.

This wasn't clear, because my post wasn't clear. I was talking about the lights on indicator light on the dash. I was wondering if the parking lights had one separate from the headlights in the past.

 

The North American Gen 5 Prius has three different light switches:

• USA Type A: off, DRL, parking, headlight
• USA Type B: DRL off, auto, parking, headlight
• Canada: auto, parking, headlight

 

Every time I drive after dark around here I see at least three cars with no lights on whatsoever. Makes me wonder how many I DIDN'T see.

 

funny you mention this. we have seen at least 20 cars without their lites on in six weeks here in orlando.
is it a florida thing? i thought it was all the drinking

 

It used to be that driving at night w/o headlights on was how the police found most drunk drivers. Now it just means an old person in a new car.

 

no cops around here to pull anyone over, haven't seen one yet

 

First car I drove, 69 bug. I think we all bug bitten!

 

My switch goes OFF, AUTO, PARKING, ON. In low light conditions (dawn, dusk, weather, etc.) I prefer Parking to Auto because I will have the tail lights on. When it gets darker and I need the full head lights to see the road, etc., I will switch to ON.

 

Is that a sure thing? Just for some generations, maybe? I'm not sure it's always the low beams.

Gen 3 liftback was sold with either an all-halogen system or with LED low beams and halogen high beams. Its wiring diagram shows the DRL system running the halogen high beams, at pulse-modulated reduced brightness. So that works the same regardless of which flavor of low beam you have.

And it kind of makes sense to me ... low beams are deliberately aimed down so you don't dazzle other drivers' night-adjusted eyes, but in daylight a dimmed high beam isn't going to dazzle anybody, and is probably the better aimed to be seen.

Gen 1 and the halogen flavor of Gen 2 both used dual-filament single bulbs, so it wouldn't be super easy to tell by looking whether it's using the low or high beam filament. (You couldn't have DRL in a Gen 2 with HID, at least not according to the 2004 US New Car Features manual or wiring diagram.)

The Gen 1 and Gen 2 wiring diagrams don't help much, because they both put the PWM DRL dimmer on the common line from the dual-filament to ground, so it would be happy to run either filament at low brightness, depending on which way the DIM relay is flipped.

Both the Gen 1 and Gen 2 NCF do say it's the low beams. The Gen 1 wiring diagram doesn't say anything about the state of the DIM relay output when the DRLs are on. The Gen 2 wiring diagram says "sends daytime operation request from TERMINAL DRL/DIM." It doesn't say what "operation request" means, but the diagram shows TERMINAL DRL/DIM pulling down the DIM relay coil, which activates the high beams, so if that's what they mean by "daytime operation request", then it's the high beams. The people writing the docs might not all have been on the same page.

Both Gen 1 and Gen 2 have separate H-LP LO and H-LP HI fuses, so maybe the easiest way to be sure for Gen 1 or Gen 2 would be for somebody with the DRLs to pull one side LO fuse and the other side HI fuse and see which side of the car has working DRL.