To always turn on your headlights while it's raining outside

If it's raining out and you don't have your headlights on, chances are semi trucks will not see you at all in their mirrors. This is obviously very dangerous. I will link a picture showing just how invisible a car with no headlights during rain is.

Danger of no headlights when it's raining.

Also, I'm sure you've heard it before but it seems alot of people think it doesn't apply to them. Do not cut off semi trucks. It very well could be the last thing you ever do. Also give us some room on the highways. I know it's a bit inconvenient with how slow we are sometimes but without us trucks, life as you know it would come to a grinding halt. Every single item that you use, eat, wear, consume, wash with, play with, live in, etc has all been delivered by a semi truck. The world completely stops living without us out here on these roads. Cut us some slack. Please. Really chaps my ass, as a Honda owner, and as a car owner in general, that my car has all these cool features, ones that would make everyone safer if they would be turned on by default, but they just... aren’t?? I’m sure there’s a boring justification, but I don’t really wanna hear it. If Bluetooth pairing won’t even work for my passengers when I’m driving, my car should turn on the headlights when I turn my wipers on. End of! Depending on the car, you might be able to leave them on. A lot of cars newer than ~2006 or so will turn the lights off automatically ~15 seconds after you lock it. That way you don't have to worry about killing the battery by leaving the lights on. Also a help when looking for your car in a parking lot at night, since the lights will come on when you unlock it.

You should double check that your driving lights include brake lights. A lot of people assume this and are out here driving with driving lights on and no brake lights, which is equally as dangerous in bad weather. Don’t ever assume people can see you. I’ve come up on plenty of cars that were driving along in very bad weather and I could barely see the car until about 20 feet away. Eventually I pass them or they exit the freeway and I can see that their front lights are on but the brake lights weren’t illuminated. My own personal vehicle isn’t like this so maybe their brake lights were truly broken but it’s happened often enough that I’m beginning to think some cars are not like mine.

Edit: as pointed out below, I’m talking about tail lights, not necessarily brake lights. But my point still stands. If your vehicle doesn’t illuminate the tail lights when you’re driving lights are on, it can be very dangerous in bad weather and especially at night of course. Cars on means lights on. Even if it’s straight up noon I always turn my lights on. It increases visibility by like 10% or something so it’s like why not do it. Why do you think motorcycles have them come on automatically when they start. If you have the really bright headlights, they have a lower MTBF. If you have DTRLs, you can improve safety by using them during the day and still reduce the number of times you'll need to buy new headlights. DTRLs can't be a replacement for using your lights, such as when it's raining, but it's a great way to have lights during the daytime just to be smart.

There are some niche reasons where I would like to be able to turn off all of my lights. Driving into a campground late at night, I might want to avoid shining my headlights into other people's tents. Or going to a "star party" for astronomers, I don't want to ruin everybody's night vision. I have no issue with daytime running lights being on by default, but I need a way to be able to turn them off, even if it only turns them off until the next time I start the car. I'm not making this up: I know someone in the midwest who hunts deer, and he has a requirement to be able to drive at night with lights off (even daylight running lamps). So he pulls the parking brake up one notch, which disables the daylight running lamps. That’s how my 2002 Forester is. Even with the headlights in the off position they’re still on at ~50% brightness when driving around and they turn off once the car’s in park. There’s no way to drive around in it with completely unlit lights. Although I mostly agree. They do need an off switch. In the US military bases have a rule where at night you turn off your headlights when coming up to the gate so you don’t blind the guard. The military can and will fine those who don’t turn their lights off. There absolutely needs to be a way to turn them off for obscure reasons like this, but you want to make it extremely difficult for someone to accidentally leave them off while driving. The best solution I can think of is having them come on by default, but have there be a way to force them off until the next time your start your car. The police save it for when they want to pull someone over. I've seen them ignore several vehicles with wipers going and no headlights, then bag a flashy looking one. I don't mind the law, just when it's not enforced uniformly.

Same in Bulgaria, I think most of Europe really. This became the law quite a few years back, it's much easier for pedestrians too! In the beginning not too many people were fond of it, but now it's all good. Always better to be seen at first glance by other drivers. You really don't want them to have to look twice, ever.

If you go under a bridge when it's sunny out, you can become invisible to drivers ahead. If you pass in and out of shade from trees you can be nearly invisible. If your car is nearly grey, or is blue, or black, you blend in with the asphalt at first glance. So yeah, just keep your lights on always. Except for people with all these new stupidly bright lights. Y'all shouldn't be on the road at all, it isn't cool in any way, and if you're that blind you need a chauffer. Also poorly adjusted headlights. I've fixed a few totalled vehicles and one came with LED headlights in stock, halogen lamp style housings while another had xenon low beams in good projector housings, but pointing at the sky rather than only below the horizon. I've left the xenons in that one car and they are great when they are adjusted properly; they shine in other drivers eyes less than halogen lights. Yet when I see other people with Xenon lights, they always seem to be adjusted way too high or not in projector housings. I saw a post a long time ago that they get to have these ultra-brite lights because the manufacturers got around the law by making them standard, or something like that.

As for why people purposely aim them to blind everyone else, that's clearly because they care more/only about themselves. They want as much road lit for them as possible and to hell with anyone going the other way. And woe be unto the person who flashes them thinking the mis-aimed lights are high beams, because then they will really get a dazzling display of "brilliance"! Those "Xeons" are illegal. The lights themselves are not, but you have to adjust the angle at which they shine. Most people that do it aftermarket only install the lights, but don't adjust the tilt. Just like almost every traffic law in the US (like cruising in the left lane), it's seldom enforced. And any idiot can get a license, a shitty car and budget Xeons. Fun fact is that we’ve got more people breaking this law with fancy new cars that have auto-brightness detection. I’m pretty sure most drivers don’t know that this setting is illegal - even my garage always turns lights to auto as oart of yearly checkup. This so much! If everyone gets in the habit of turning them on every time they get in the car then there'll be no more people driving around at night without lights on because they forgot to turn them on. And with LED headlights I think very few people would experience the issue of headlights burning out.

I’ve had my car (second-hand vehicle) for two and a half years. I drive with my lights on rain or shine, daytime and night time, doesn’t matter they are always on. In the time I’ve owned the car I’ve replaced one bulb. I had another car for like 6 years and replaced bulbs maybe 3 to 4 times in that time. I think your car is a special case. I highly doubt it, I’ve had a number of cars, have always had my lights always on in each one and have definitely not replaced bulbs more than 10 times across all vehicles. Could be an electrical issue with your car, could be moisture getting in there, could be that the bulbs aren’t sitting right in their housing and are jiggling about when your driving. But it’s definitely not normal for them to blow as often as you are experiencing from having them on all the time. Thank you for this! My boyfriend is a truck driver and I was on the phone with him when he was driving one day during a rain storm. Some car (grey, its always a darker colored car for him) came flying by and he said he never saw the car until it was right next to him. The amount of people that think semis can stop on a dime or can see them is crazy! Plus, the semi will always win in a crash. It will always win people. I do my best to be as courteous to semi trucks as possible. I leave them room to change lanes, flash my brights when they’re clear. I know it’s small but I love getting the hazard flash as thanks from semis. I know how frustrated I am driving around all these idiots, I can’t imagine driving a 60+ foot truck that can’t be agile around all the time.

Very important addendum: please make sure you are not relying on your auto headlight feature for this. Often in the daytime, rain (especially snow) won't get dark enough to kick the lights auto sensor on.

This is very bad, because your daytime running lights do not turn on your tail lights. That's even more dangerous, especially in white out conditions. Just because you see light coming from the front of your car, it doesn't mean your headlights are "on". Imagine going 30 mph on an interstate in white out blizzard conditions, when a white car with no lights on it's rear appears out of no where less than 20 feet in front of you. Going less than 15 mph. In the left "lane". Damn good thing I was going speed appropriate to white out conditions and thought something looked funny ahead. I started slowing down and thankfully didn't have to use my brakes (snow drivers know how bad even tapping your breaks in that situation can be). What I was seeing was the glow from their daytime running lights casting a halo around their car.

Still have no idea how they were seeing past the bonnet with those.

tl:dr don't use the auto setting during rain or snow. Make sure you physically turn them on. Thank you for posting this. Sometimes is hard to remember there’s an actual human driving those huge ass things. I will hopefully now be more conscious when I share the road with big trucks. On a side note thank you for all of you do, I don’t think people thank you guys enough. We thank the military and firefighters but you guys help us out just as much. I remember my coworker and I would sometimes see each other's cars on the highway on the way to work. We came from different areas, but the highway merged together. I remember it was raining and my car was ahead of theirs, and I realized they didn't have their headlights on. When we got to work, I told them that I noticed their headlights were off coming into work. I thought maybe they weren't working or just completely forgot since it was light outside, but raining. They asked why would they have their headlights on. I said because it's raining and I'm pretty sure it's the law to have them on. They told me they never turn their headlights on when it rains. I told them, well...you should probably have them on...and they just scoffed. The conversation stopped after that, but I was just dumfounded that they didn't care.