Just need to vent...

As I get older I find things like automatic headlights very helpful - they automatically turn on whenever needed and turn off when not needed based on ambient lighting conditions. The DRL's on our vehicles are also automatic - they come on anytime the headlights are not on.

For the incurable fiddlers or special conditions there are of course the manual settings to turn headlights and DRL's on/off.

I can't remember the last time I had to turn headlights on/off and have no desire to begin incorporating that habit into my driving routine again.

 

Not every car with DRLs has auto on headlights. The 2023 Prius LE doesn't. It is just auto off in the event the driver forgets to turn them off. This can lead to someone mistaking the DRLs for headlights on, and driving into the night with taillights and the rest off. Seen it plenty of times.

Canada only recently mandated taillights one with DRLs.

 

The complaint isn't the presence of automation. It's that the designer went out of their way to make the related notification system present a negative logic condition in the form of an affirmation i.e. "YOU ARE NOT DOING THE WRONG THING!"

Why not just tell me that the headlights are on?

My 2020 Mazda has automatic headlights. It doesn't care a bit if I override them with a manual instruction. And more often than not, I leave it to automatic mode.

 

At the time I lived in Detroit, it hadn't built casinos yet. The mayor at the time really really wanted to build casinos, and kept getting the question put back on the ballot for election after election after election because the voters kept on, for whatever reason, persisting in what he felt was the wrong choice.

For one election, the wording on the ballot looped through something like three negatives, maybe it was two, or four. It was something about whether the City should not override a State law that was something to do with not having casinos. However it actually worked, I forget, if you still hadn't changed your mind and you still didn't want casinos, this time you had to vote yes.

The voters still figured it out and turned down the casinos for the umpteenth time.

The poor mayor never got his way until after Windsor, ON built their casinos. Then the argument could be "they'll get our money if we don't have 'em", and that, for better or worse, finally got the votes.

 

Great. Now I can picture a 2024 Buick throwing this up on the dashboard:

MANUAL OVERRIDE (LOCKOUT) OF AUTOMATIC
HEADLIGHTS NOT YET DEACTIVATED!

99.9999% OF DRIVERS ARE NOT DOING IT WRONG
0.0001% OF DRIVERS ARE NOT NOT YOU​

 

I didn't have a grasp of what you were pointing out. My experience is an icon of headlights -which means they automatically came on or no icon which means they are off.

 

At least you've got your running lights on.

I always have to remind my out of town guest, that the only automatic headlamps is on the SUV. The rest of my cars are manual headlamps. I guess that makes me the poor, cheap, SOB in the group. LoL

 

Many of these posts are eye opening.

Our vehicle has automatic on/off headlights with individual icons for parking lights and headlights. In automatic mode DRL.s are interlocked with the parking lights/headlights both can't be on at the same time You never have to worry about them or what mode you are in. There is also a manual override for fiddlers and special circumstances.
Automatic temperature for the climate system works wonderfully but there are knobs and buttons for the fiddlers and special circumstances.

I think the individuals with complaints would do themselves a big favor by cross shopping car brands next time they need a vehicle. There are manufacturers with well thought out customer interfaces that work outstandingly. Cars that come standard with Apple Car Play, Android Auto - and the manufactures own interface to boot. Free internet apps to interact with your car remotely.

Lane Keep Assist, Smart Cruise Control, Automatic Stopping, Blind Spot Monitoring, Rear Cross Traffic Alert, Automatic Accident Avoidance, Traction Control, Automatic Headlights, Automatic Temperature Control, Automatic Headlight High Beam Control etc are all mostly standard and available on most all models for many manufacturers.

It makes driving very enjoyable and the extra security and safety are invaluable for drivers.( for the individual who has problems with modern safety - make sure you can turn off the ones you don't like)

I came from a 2004 Sienna and a 2008 Prius and bought a new 2019 and 2020 different vehicles from different manufacturers mainly for the new safety and convivence features.
I made a conscious decision to shop other brands than Toyota after owning only Toyotas for over 30 years. It sounds like that was a good idea.

I would suggest shopping one of the Korean Brands first if you are in the market for a vehicle then shop all the rest and compare. Buy the best value for the vehicle with all the modern features. You will know what is out there in the market and not feel you are stuck with a vehicle that doesn't meet your needs.

Everyone has their individual needs and best fit there is no need to feel you must shoehorn yourself into a particular Manufacturers goods if they don't fit your needs.

 

Not.
Even.
Close.

IIRC G3 Priuses didn't have them in America.
They had the photocell on the dash, but both of my company-issued 2010 G3's had manual headlamps.

My solution was to turn them on and leave them on, having only to remember to check the switch after somebody else drove the car.

 

The Subaru only has the one indicator light for parking and head lights. I recall cars owned in the past having separate indicators.

 

They had the photocell on the dash, and they had the feature programmed into the Body ECU, and they left out the wire between the photocell and the body ECU.

The first thing I liked after adding the missing wire was that, even without using the automatic headlight feature at all, the instrument display immediately started working better.

Without the photocell connected, it just gives you the usual dumb "lights off, instruments bright" or "lights on, instruments dim" behavior. As soon as you connect the photocell, it then recognizes when you're in those dusk or dawn situations where it's dark enough to want your lights on, but hard to see the dimmed instruments, and it makes them brighter, and you don't have to do anything else for it to do that.

If you want to go further and have the auto headlight control, there's one more missing wire and a switch to add. But you get the smarter instrument dimming right away as soon as you complete the photocell connection.

 

Same here, but, in the winter, I'll make sure the A/C is turned on at least once a month or so to keep the lubrication in there circulated. In the 90's, I had a Subaru that had an A/C seize up on me, ruining it. The technician told me to make sure to run all A/C's monthly to keep them happy. (And the cost of the replacing that A/C in the Subby was more than the car was worth!)

 

HA! My daughter (who drives a Mazda) had to borrow my Prius and, afterwards, asked me how I stand all the beeping from the lane sensors and it will beep if you exceed the speed limit! I guess I just got used to it!! (And a bit worried at her probably speeding!!)

 

I see this (barely - it's dark) very often, especially early in the evening. I don't know if people think their DRLs are enough, or if they see a reflection in the car in front and think they've got their auto on headlights.

----

I definitely see more cars driving with their lights off these days than I used to. I expect that in a lot of cases it's someone driving their husband's/wife's/child's/parent's/friend's car - they're used to auto headlights and they forget to turn them on when they're in a car that doesn't have them.

-----

My other thing about auto-on headlights is that maybe they should adjust their sensitivity for the colour of the car. And for the weather.

My car is black, and sometimes my auto-on headlights are a bit lazy. For example, the new cross-city tunnel has lights that aren't as bright as daylight, but they're bright enough to stop my headlights from turning themselves on, when lights are clearly necessary.

At dusk, or in poor visibility, I find that lights would be necessary for the visibility of cars that are black, or grey, or silver when they're not necessary for red or white cars. But the auto lights seem to be set for white cars. They should come on more easily on darker cars.

I suppose it depends on where you live, but this seems to create problems here. People assume that the auto headlights know what they're doing, and there's no need to turn them on manually, ever. But the auto headlights detects darkness; they do not detect poor visibility. So in fog, or smoke, or heavy rain, they often don't come on, and no-one thinks to turn them on manually.

 

My two cars with auto headlights were able to select the on sensitivity in the settings menu.

 

I have never thought to do that. I'll have to have a look.

 

I have set mine to the highest sensitivity offered, and I wish it went higher.

 

Yeah, our state has a law that requires the headlight to be turned on when the front wiper is operating. But, I have not had any car implement the automatic headlight to turn on when the wiper is operating.

 

That's a really good idea. But I've never heard of a car that does it.

Australians are absolutely hopeless at driving in fog or heavy rain. They don't slow down to suit conditions - if the speed limit is 110, they'll drive at 110 whatever the weather. They don't turn their lights on, because it hasn't occurred to them that if they can't see other cars, other drivers can't see them. They don't know about changed braking distances, so they crash all the time if it rains or if it's foggy. Once I went to pick up something my wife had bought on Facebook. The vendor was Russian, and he, his wife and his kids were all in their underwear (but that's not really relevant - it was just odd). I apologised for being late, and he said, "Ah, yes. Don't tell me. It is raining, and so the Australians all crashed." He was right: I'd been delayed by jams behind three different crashes. We had a good chat about how bad they are, while I maintained eye contact with him and his wife.

There's a section of road through the Blue Mountains that I have to drive along quite often. Fog is common there. One day, when the fog was heavy, I'd slowed down to 60km/h in an 80 zone, because I couldn't see far enough to drive any faster. Three cars overtook me, all beeping their horns because I was going below the speed limit. (I should stress that I am not a slow driver, but I slow down when conditions demand it.) Ten minutes later I got to a section of the road where it was still foggy, but where there's a very steep downhill section with hairpin bends. One of the cars that had passed me had hit a telegraph pole; the other two were upside-down.

I have a friend who is a very good driver, and who's been driving for 40 years. But one day we both did the same drive, through that same section of the Blue Mountains, to another friend's wedding, and hit heavy fog. When we got to where we were going, I said that I'd had my fog lights on through much of the mountainous bit, and she said that was a good idea, but that her car didn't have fog lights. I showed her where they were and where the button was on her car, and she was astonished. We asked around at the wedding, and guests who grew up in New Zealand, Britain, Canada and China knew about the fog lights on their car, and none of the guests who'd grown up in Australia did.