On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 9:42:13 PM UTC-6, wrote:
On Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:20:58 -0500, Micky
wrote:

On Tue, 08 Dec 2015 19:23:27 -0700, rbowman
wrote:

On 12/08/2015 06:07 PM, wrote:
Up here in Ontario Canada it has been a legal requirement for
motorbikes to run with lights for several decades - and all new
Canadian market cars have daytime running lights - any time you are
moving, you are lit up.

The daytime running lights on cars negates any advantage of a headlight
on a bike standing out.

The last car had daytime lights I came out of work one evening at about
dusk. Perhaps I was preoccupied but I started the car, saw the light
beams and drove off. About a half mile later a cop pulled me over and
was getting ready to ticket me for defective tail lights since he saw
the headlights but no taillights. I told him the tail lights were fine
and they would come on if I turned the headlights on. It took a while to
convince him.

The next Toyota I bought was the same model but no longer had the
daylight feature. I realy think if you're going to have daylight
headlights the taillights should come on too like on a bike.

Anything automatic can be a help and a problem.

My headlights come on, maybe dimmer than normal, whenever I start the
engine on my 2000 toyota. This led to problems when I wanted to
surveil my girlfriend's home and I needed to run the engine for heat.

I finally learned that if I put the hand brake on BEFORE I start the
engine, the headlights don't go on.

But now I don't know how to turn the lights on without turning the
engine on.

This car has two photocells on the dashboard. One turns some more
lights on when it gets dark, and I forget what the other one does. I
like them.
The headlight switches USUALLY have on, off, and auto settings,
except for some of the GM crap that doesn't give you a choice.

What is coming on when you start the car is the DRL. Auto headlights
turn on full lights when it gets dark.

The second photocell on some cars auto-dims your high beams.

When I was a kid, I got my hands on an automatic headlight dimmer system from a 1050's Cadillac. It had a big photocell sensor in a streamlined housing on the dashboard and a tube type control unit in a housing under the hood.. I gutted the thing and used the parts for other things like using the vibrator and some batteries to make a high voltage power supply to zap my classmates with. I should have kept it together because collectors are looking for them to do restoration work on old Caddys and it would be worth some money. ^_^

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1950s-Cadill...-/181764179230

http://tinyurl.com/pmw7jfd

[8~{} Uncle Caddy Monster