I do not advocate driving with lights off. If you want to drive with your lights on, turn them on by all means. But have you really never done anything in a car besides drive it? Let's face it there's a lot of time spent in cars that aren't engaged in driving at the time.

I always have my lights on while driving, but sometimes, while not driving, it's really nice to have them off for many reasons, especially in winter. Warming up a car in cold weather, waiting to pick someone up, dimiming as a courtesy, darkening the foreground so you can see in the mirrors while backing up, parking at a campsite, romance, and a zillion other reasons. If you never want yours off, then it's plain and simple, don't turn them off. For those of us who have good reasons to turn them off, why do you feel such a need to stop us?

I really think it's a control freak thing. You know there are people out there that think all cars should be governed at the speed limit? Apply all your safety points above to that proposal and try to justify fighting that logic. We live in a society of choice, let's keep it that way.

 

I feel storngly both ways.

Seriously, I've been swayed by the pro-choice arguements. There clearly ARE reasons, just as there are for having an override button to shut off my reverse sensors in my F-350 (like when backing up a trailer). That particular button just stays in effect during that particular reverse cycle. I work with industrial relays and electrical, and maybe I can rig something up, like I did to override the stupid "skip-shift" in my Trans-Am Firehawk (a simple resistor of equivalent ohms as the skip-shift solenoid).

It would be easy to pull the fuse, wire in a switch to the fuse terminals with an in-line fuse of the same amp rating, and even perhaps have a tiny "idiot light" associated with it so you know when they're off (or on) - all mounted wherever one wants.

You could also wire in a relay to the DRL's, with the coil of the relay being connected / disconnected by means of a mini-headphone plug mounted next to the aux plug (if you have the navi), and normally hidden under the aux port cover. It would work in much the same manner as when, on an old stereo, you plugged in the headphones, the speakers automatically disconnected. You could have a little "dummy plug", perhaps with a little LED if desired, that when plugged in, shuts off the DRL's. Very surreptitious, eh?

Or rig it so that they go off whenever you honk your horn. That'd work good at that nativity scene thing, eh?

Really, so many ways to do it, and definitely not rocket surgery, and maybe some fun to boot, coming up with a clever way to effect it.

 

Please refer to post #2.

 

Well I decided to extend my SOC by pulling the fuse for the DRL. Well a few days later a lady in a van pulled out to cross the road. I was about 100' away travelling at 55 kil. per hr.. I locked up the anti locks and was within 1' of her when she crossed the road in front of me. Her eyes were like soucers and so were mine. She said the windshield post was in her line of site but it wasn't? She just did not see me for some reason. Anyway when I got home I put the fuse back in. My DRL are working again! In Canada its the law and I suppose we get used to seeing lights? H

 

Yes, seeing this old topic I just want to stand up and say,

BLAME CANADA!
(see this link)

Look, Americans take personal freedom a little too far, saying that the individual is more important by far than the community. (The irony is that the more people have to live around others the more they need standards and rules to cope with each other) How many states still allow optional seat belts? And Americans get so adamant about preserving their personal freedoms that they don't want to be told what is best for them. DRLs are a very good idea and they work (eg. Being visible to opposing traffic on a two-lane highway while passing vehicles), and if America could adopt it faster then you would all see how a rolling motor vehicle with at least its DRLs on is far more intuitive than a moving "parked vehicle".

Maybe one resents Honda taking the initiative to standardize their build type to work in both Canada and USA, but the alternative is a more expensive vehicle and a nation that will hem and haw its way into global irrelevancy.