A pet peeve of mine is to be driving at night only to come up on a person that doesn't have their lights on. And, I'm sure it's because they believe they have their lights on - when in fact the lighting they are seeing is that cast by their DRLs. They have no clue that the rear of the car is completely dark. Definitely an unsafe condition.
Rewind to last night as I'm leaving an adult education session I'd just attended. As I'm driving away, I get a call from one of my fellow attendees letting me know that as I drove off, my rear lights were off. Duh, I'm my own pet peeve!! Yes, I was driving with just DRLs illuminated. I quickly switched my headlights to the on position - and barely noticed a difference. Did it again - and it was hard to tell the difference between DRLs only and full on headlights. If that's the same with other makes and models of cars - no wonder so many are driving around with just DRLs at night.
I know, for those of us with AUTO headlights, we could just leave the headlights in that position. But, I have other drivers of my car and they tend to turn the switch to off. And, I'm not sure all makes/models of cars have AUTO position. But, many of them do have DRLs and some are driving around at night without proper rear illumination.
I see this too often - and it's dangerous.
So, as a way to avoid this situation, I'm highly considering disabling my DRLs so that I'll not make that mistake again. I wished there was a more obvious way to know that only DRLs are illuminated - so that drivers would know that they were under-illuminated in the evening. My prior car had DRLs and I never had the problem. Why? Because the dashboard lights were dark if you didn't have the headlights in the on position. You noticed a dark dashboard right away!! My CX-5 dash is always illuminated - so no clear way to know I'm just with DRLs. Am I missing an indicator somewhere?
So, have you folks also noticed this happening - and how often?
Rewind to last night as I'm leaving an adult education session I'd just attended. As I'm driving away, I get a call from one of my fellow attendees letting me know that as I drove off, my rear lights were off. Duh, I'm my own pet peeve!! Yes, I was driving with just DRLs illuminated. I quickly switched my headlights to the on position - and barely noticed a difference. Did it again - and it was hard to tell the difference between DRLs only and full on headlights. If that's the same with other makes and models of cars - no wonder so many are driving around with just DRLs at night.
I know, for those of us with AUTO headlights, we could just leave the headlights in that position. But, I have other drivers of my car and they tend to turn the switch to off. And, I'm not sure all makes/models of cars have AUTO position. But, many of them do have DRLs and some are driving around at night without proper rear illumination.
I see this too often - and it's dangerous.
So, as a way to avoid this situation, I'm highly considering disabling my DRLs so that I'll not make that mistake again. I wished there was a more obvious way to know that only DRLs are illuminated - so that drivers would know that they were under-illuminated in the evening. My prior car had DRLs and I never had the problem. Why? Because the dashboard lights were dark if you didn't have the headlights in the on position. You noticed a dark dashboard right away!! My CX-5 dash is always illuminated - so no clear way to know I'm just with DRLs. Am I missing an indicator somewhere?
So, have you folks also noticed this happening - and how often?