8 ms·

Despite all the innovation in the headlights themselves, it seems that a significant portion of drivers these days can’t seem to remember to turn them on. I am

• lloeki 7y ago
  I’m borderline thinking the secret agenda behind daytime running lamps is actually not related to daytime at all. Many (all?) modern cars have an auto mode for night lights but it seems to endlessly baffle people as to how they work. At some point it seems you can throw all the UX you want, some are hell bent to skip on being attentive to basic driving safety anyway.
• rob74 7y ago
  Fortunately (at least where I'm living) automatic headlights are already more widespread than the fancy "matrix-lighting" headlights, for the simple reason that a light sensor on the windshield is cheaper than two state-of-the-art headlights. But, I confess, if anybody would move the switch from "Auto" to "Off" on my car, I might join the people driving without lights for some time before I would notice it...
  • empath75 7y ago
    I have kids that like to play with switches and it has happened to me a couple of times.
  • lagadu 7y ago
    I'm like that too. Furthermore I have a story about that: A couple months ago I found myself driving a car that didn't have automatic windshield wipers. I drove in the rain for a couple of minutes without turning them on and only realized what was happening by the time I asked myself "why can't I see anything?".
  • clarry 7y ago
    Happened to me after taking my car to inspection a couple years back. I keep lights in auto position always, but I guess they test the parking lights and other positions and afterwards left them turned off. Took me quite a while before I realized I'm driving without lights.
• sesuximo 7y ago
  This is my pet peeve. I have seen several police cars with their lights off as they leave a station near my workplace! Unbelievable. I also see a lot of cars with brights on but no lights. I annoy the people around me by asking them the difference between brights and lights and the answers are very depressing. It seems that many people fiddle with a few buttons until they see light in front of them and then consider everything good.
• martythemaniak 7y ago
  This is one of those things you didn't realize could be better until someone did it. My Model 3 has everything set on auto. If the car can't see, it'll turn the lights on. If it doesn't see an incoming car, it'll turn on the high beams. After a year of driving it as my only car, I needed a second car and got a cheap ICE clunker. Having to manage lights is a PITA and basically a failure of design.
  • homonculus1 7y ago
    Turning your headlights on is a PITA? Convenience tech has completely wussified us.
    • omni 7y ago
      Leaving safety critical functionality to chance is bad engineering, it's not some ubermensch societal design or whatever you're going for here.
      • homonculus1 7y ago
        To chance? You flick a dial at the same time you put the car in gear. How complicated is that?
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
    • ska 7y ago
      Existence proof: Every time you see a car driving at dusk (or later) without lights on is an instance of this technology failing. Beyond that, a significant percentage of all drivers cannot or will not manage high beams correctly.
      • MS90 7y ago
        That's not the technology failing, that's the users failing. Technological failure would imply that manually turning your lights on and off somehow breaks them or renders them otherwise nonfunctional, or the lever/switch itself breaks. If someone got in a car and tried to put it in drive without starting it, would that be a technological failure of ignition switches?
• pragmatick 7y ago
  Many cars in scandinavian countries don't allow your lights to be turned off when the engine is running. I actually prefer that.
  • kilpikaarna 7y ago
    Because it’s illegal to drive with the lights off even during daytime. Which in winter might not be that light anyway. We have a ’03 VW Golf that turns the lights on when the engine starts, but requires you to turn the knob from Off via Parking lights to On to use the high beams. But then it doesn’t warn you that the lights are on when you shut the engine off. So whenever you use the high beams you’ll probably end up running the battery down afterwards because you’re not used to having to turn the lights off manually. Bad UX was a thing before computerized dashboards.
    • dr_orpheus 7y ago
      Just curious, but how long have you had that car? I have an '01 Passat that has the same design where the lights come on when the engine starts. It used to beep at me if the lights we still on when I opened the door to the car. But that died a few years ago (and I have since had to get my car jumped multiple times from leaving it on so I definitely get you point). Just wondering if it was more of a "bad part" than "Bad UX"
      • kilpikaarna 7y ago
        Oh, didn’t think of that! Only had it for about 1.5 years.
    • mrguyorama 7y ago
      I'm surprised it would run the battery down. My 2004 toyota had fully manual exterior lights, but they would shut off automatically after about 30 seconds if the car was turned off. No help for you if you forget the dome light on though
  • blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Aye, Canada requires daytime running lights. Helpful in the snow and dark and dreary winters... like right now...
• wiggles_md 7y ago
  I assign some blame to always-on modern gauge clusters. You couldn’t see the old-style front lit ones at night unless you turned on your headlights, so there was a sort of natural reminder.
  • orev 7y ago
    I think it’s more a function of the street lamps that allow you to see the road without having to turn on the headlights. If people can’t see where they’re going, it’s obvious very quickly.
    • LeifCarrotson 7y ago
      In a lot of northern states in the winter, one of the previous societal expectation was that you'd turn your lights on whenever it was snowing - which, around here, is pretty much constant, as is the resulting salt residue on windshields. It's not very bright either because the sun at solar noon peaks at about 20 degrees above the horizon and is behind perpetual clouds. But that's still bright enough that a lot of automatic headlights don't turn on.
      • singingboyo 7y ago
        Don't most (if not all) auto headlights turn on when the wipers are on, though? So, off if just cloudy, on in snow/rain. I know mine do turn on, even at the lowest intermittent setting. I thought I'd read somewhere that that was typical, but... maybe not?
        • LeifCarrotson 7y ago
          Yes, but powdery flurries are blown off by a light breeze not to mention driving at 25+ mph, so wipers don't often need to be used.
        • magduf 7y ago
          Mine don't, and my car is pretty new. The problem is: I leave my wipers on almost all the time, rain or shine. With automatic wipers, there's little reason to turn them off, so I end up just leaving them on most of the time, and then when I get splashed by a passing vehicle going through a puddle or something, the wipers will automatically clear the windshield. You wouldn't want the headlights to turn on all the time when wipers are on automatic mode. Now why they don't turn on for regular modes, I'm not sure, but probably consistency: if you don't turn them on for automatic mode, but you do for regular mode, then that's going to be too confusing for the driver. Maybe they should come on when the wipers are activated in any mode and stay on for a certain number of seconds (by "stay on", I mean actively clearing the windshield, not just waiting for water to appear). But this might be too unreliable in practice?
• adrianmonk 7y ago
  This seems like one of those things where the industry (and/or regulation) has stagnated and is missing really easy, obvious wins in UX. Why not beep at me or otherwise alert me if it's night and I'm driving with my lights off? You know there's already a light sensor in the car, and there's already a way to beep at people or show them messages (oil is low, parking brake engaged, etc.) There's a thing that beeps at me when my gas tank gets low. And there's a thing that beeps at me when my seat belt isn't fastened. So obviously it's OK to beep at me while driving. There's even a thing that beeps at me if I accidentally leave my headlights on and might drain the battery. Which is a fine thing to warn about, but surely not as important as a safety issue like driving with headlights off. One could say that beeping at people whose headlights are off at night is not necessary because many cars (maybe most?) already have an automatic headlight mode, so the driver can just use that and the problem is solved. But that ignores one simple fact: people aren't doing it. Watch cars drive down a road at night, and it won't take long until you see someone whose headlights are off. I'd wager a lot of the time their car has an automatic headlight mode but they don't have the switch in the right position. As computer people know from fighting server downtime, if something is important, you monitor whether it's behaving as required, and if it isn't, you alert.
• megashroom 7y ago
  https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Bainbrid... This seems pretty relevant.