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I have had a couple of scares driving at night, even doing my best imitation of a tree full of owls. Dark cars w/o taillights (and that happens way more often t
by drivingmenuts 3y ago
I have had a couple of scares driving at night, even doing my best imitation of a tree full of owls. Dark cars w/o taillights (and that happens way more often than I'd like) on a street with poor lighting (ditto) is the perfect recipe for a disaster. I don't know why people drive without lights, but they do, and it's a damn nightmare when you come across one.
Sometimes, you do everything right and the Universe tries to destroy you anyway.
- johnwalkr 3y agoWhy doesn’t every country mandate daytime running lights like Canada has for decades? Modern cars also always detect low light and crank up the dashboard brightness. There’s no longer a good clue to the driver that they forgot to turn the headlights on.
- drivingmenuts 3y ago> Why doesn’t every country mandate daytime running lights like Canada has for decades? Not everyone drives an up-to-date vehicle and TBH, some vehicle owners do not care that they are a hazard, regardless of what the law requires. Here in Austin, when the police get in a snit, they just stop enforcing the law and even when they're not in a snit about something, there are parts of town where traffic laws are traffic suggestions. All of this makes for a somewhat hazardous driving environment at times.
- amethyst 3y agoMy 2017 Golf R would intentionally turn off the dashboard backlights at night if the lights weren't on, providing me excellent feedback that they weren't on. Either head lights should always be on auto by default, or more cars need proper feedback to the driver when they aren't.
- MBCook 3y agoDidn’t the US do that a long time ago? What we don’t have is mandated automatic headlights. I remember there was a discussion recently about requiring automatic headlights or maybe not automatically increasing the brightness of the dash when it’s dark out. But I don’t remember what happened with it.
- sathackr 3y agoI would argue that daytime running lights is the cause of many cars driving without taillights. In the US, DRL are only forward-facing. Nothing rear-facing is illuminated. Drivers that have switched their headlights to the off position, the DRLs are "bright enough" to drive and not notice your headlights are off. I see them very often, and for some reason a large portion of them are Hyundai. Maybe because the dash light, button backlights are independent of the headlights, so there's no real indication inside that your lights are not on, except the switch position.
- johnwalkr 3y agoI didn’t realize DRL didn’t include rear lights. They should!
- ghaff 3y agoI pretty much always keep my lights on Auto. But I've had them turned off when I've had the car in for service and, probably because previous vehicles haven't had DRLs, I haven't noticed on a couple of occasions.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoIn a Mazda with automatic highbeams on, it will look like you have your lights on full power, but you won't have any brake lights. As you mentioned, this mode is incredibly difficult to figure out your in.
- TylerE 3y agoDRLs are actually the problem, not the solution. These people think their lights are on.
- cladopa 3y ago>Why doesn’t every country mandate daytime running lights like Canada has for decades? Because for most countries in the world that have sun bright sun most of the year it is totally ridiculous. Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria. Greece, Italy, Thailand, Filipines, Mexico... Those countries have ridiculous daylight saving time changes because countries in the North believed this hack was a good idea. The darkness Canadians experience in Winter and low sun in Summer are conditions in Norther countries other countries do not have.
- glaucon 3y ago> Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria. Greece, Italy, Thailand, Filipines, Mexico. Those countries have ridiculous daylight saving time changes because countries in the North believed this hack was a good idea. I'm curious to know where this list came from. Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines do not use DST. Spain, Greece and Italy do use DST, as members of the EU I believe they are obliged to do so.
- lucianbr 3y agoI think now EU member states are allowed to abandon DST if they want to. Nobody has so far, though.
- Arainach 3y agoThere are very few good reasons to have your headlights off while your vehicle is running. Having a switch to manually turn them off if you're i.e. boarding a ferry and don't want to blind workers is fine but the default should be full on all the time - daytime, night time, adverse weather, whatever.