New car tail lights

[Tim Frank]

I have not bought a new car in the past 5 years but have noticed in the past year that you see a surprising number of cars driving at night without tail lights.
Apparantly, there is now a separate switch that you need to turn on for tail lights.

Does anyone know a rational reason that the giant minds at the car companies have done this?
There has to be some sort of up side; I can only see the potential for disaster....

 

[puddle jumper]

Re: New car tail lights

Are you sure that may be these people just have not turned on there head lights and just running on there day time running lights. I have never run into a auto that you can just turn the head lights on with out the tail lights on.

 

[windsors03cobra]

Re: New car tail lights

Well everything is auto-magic now so many people dont feel they need to flick the lights on and sometimes in between light and dark folks are driving around with daytime running lamps only which means no tail lights. Most times the daytime running lamps are also half voltage and brightness but in the city few notice.
Todays automobiles are really designed to do so many things on their own today its kind of sad, I kinda like operating a car like I operate a piece of machinery.
You get into certain old cars and trucks and you almost need 3 hands to drive them.

I drive with all my lights on all the time.

 

[dolluper]

Re: New car tail lights

When you buy a new one buy one with auto lights {twlight sennital} or learn to turn on a switch.....the ones you have seen hav'nt learnt yet....or tooooooo lazy my my

 

[kenmyfam]

Re: New car tail lights

Never seen that myself. My guess is the daytime running lights are still on and the driver did not switch the main lights on.

 

[TilliamWe]

Re: New car tail lights

Tim, yep, those are people just running with their DRLs only. However, your dash lights are NOT supposed to come on with the DRLs, so if it truly "dark" out, you can not see anything inside the car either. I suspect you are witnessing this at dusk or on brightly lit city street, and the people just aren't aware that their lights aren't on. However, most GMs that all have DRLs, also get Twilight Sentinal, thus the sensor turns the dash lights and tail lights on when it's dark. But even on those cars, there is still a traditional switch that turns on the parking lights at the first notch and the headlamps at the second, if you want to control them manually. Not a separate switch.

 

[DJ]

Re: New car tail lights

Daytime running lights and LED instrument clusterts are the cause. The lit up LED clusters make people think thier lights are on.

 

[gss036]

Re: New car tail lights

My new VW Jetta has the DLR's and there is a light that comes on in the instrument panel, but if you want tail lights, you have to turn on the light switch. My 2000 Chev Silverado automatically turns on the lights at dusk and you can't turn them off unless you go to the first click on the emergency brake pedal, it is the pitts, also has DLR running lights for daylight that stay on all the time.