Main Beam on - safety issue?

SWK74 said:

It freaked me out the first time it happened because it was on a B road! I’m really careful now with lights.

I think it must charge the 12v when you leave the lights on - don’t quote me though. The reason is that I switched to “manual on” today because of fog, forgot the lights on all day (10 hours), but the car started fine and the battery was 14.3V.

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It helps when the parking lights (which is what's left on when you switch the car off) are all LEDs.
Old cars with filament bulbs could last all night with the parking lights on, I reckon with LEDS it would last a few days. The 12v will charge up when it gets low if you HV SOC is high anyway.

dsr said:

Headlights on (not on auto), with the lights slider switch fully left. More than once now I have pushed the arm to choose main beam and, in the process, accidentally moved the switch to the right - so that I find myself on sidelights. Did it last night on a bendy B road and it scared me more than a bit. Just me not being careful enough, or have others done the same?

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Yes, the same thing has happened to me two or three times. I'll learn to be more careful over time, but for now it is pretty disconcerting. Another problem I find is that when the switch is on Auto but I choose to over-ride that to manually change the low-/high-beam, sometimes the system reverts back to Auto and sometimes it doesn't. The only way to force it back to Auto is to move the switch to Off and then back to Auto, and of course that itself turns the lights to side-lights only for a short time while I am frantically trying to get it sorted. Not great.

Yes, has happened to me too many times! I agree the auto-headlights are another gimmick, far to unreliable (as with LKA) to be useful. My software was updated a few weeks ago and I've noticed that the headlights do not come on until it gets much darker than before - when the light came on when the sun went behind a cloud

dsr said:

Headlights on (not on auto), with the lights slider switch fully left. More than once now I have pushed the arm to choose main beam and, in the process, accidentally moved the switch to the right - so that I find myself on sidelights. Did it last night on a bendy B road and it scared me more than a bit. Just me not being careful enough, or have others done the same?

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Me too! Several times. The first time I felt sure I would crash. As you say, very scary. It happened a couple of days ago, and the oncoming traffic felt the need to flash, honk, etc. Not helpful but well intentioned.

Definitely a design fault, as at least 10 incidences in my first year. Never done this sort of thing before in more than 1 million miles driven (my shame at the damage done to our environment

I did the same on our first night drive, lights full beam auto, bendy ,pitch black ,b-road , not wanting to dazzle any on coming traffic, tried to remember how to get to normal headlights, flick the switch left, fu** bjeezus, shi* and that was just me, cannot repeat what the wife said, panic switching and braking to get some light back. Next day sat in the car and tried to get some muscle memory into my left hand on how to work this switch . At night now , just use normal headlights with manual old style main beam selection. In fact, most of the modern "driver aids " are switched off leaving me with a car for which I,ve paid a premium amount of money to have in, but with a car with similar characteristics to a 1980s family runabout. Progress hey!

FYI, you're not "on sidelights" when the car is running and you accidentally turn the light switch off, you're driving with no lights except the front DRLs, so no rear lights at all.

On a similar note, it can take minutes from opening the door to driving off due to setting drive modes, safety settings, navigation device etc and at night the dips will be on throughout.

If there's a brow to the road I used to turn the lights off during setup, but have forgotten to turn them back on before driving a couple of times now. Instead I switch to sides as at least you have rear lights and also I think it's legal at 30 MPH in a well lit area.

I'd much prefer the dips to come when you go in to ready mode, and also preferably not when getting in the car.

DixieTGS said:

On a similar note, it can take minutes from opening the door to driving off due to setting drive modes, safety settings, navigation device etc and at night the dips will be on throughout.

If there's a brow to the road I used to turn the lights off during setup, but have forgotten to turn them back on before driving a couple of times now. Instead I switch to sides as at least you have rear lights and also I think it's legal at 30 MPH in a well lit area.

I'd much prefer the dips to come when you go in to ready mode, and also preferably not when getting in the car.

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As I said above, you cannot switch to sidelights whilst the car is turned on, when you move the switch to turn the headlights off only the DRLs remain on, no rear lights.

DixieTGS said:

On a similar note, it can take minutes from opening the door to driving off due to setting drive modes, safety settings, navigation device etc and at night the dips will be on throughout.

If there's a brow to the road I used to turn the lights off during setup, but have forgotten to turn them back on before driving a couple of times now. Instead I switch to sides as at least you have rear lights and also I think it's legal at 30 MPH in a well lit area.

I'd much prefer the dips to come when you go in to ready mode, and also preferably not when getting in the car.

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I've done this a couple of times too, switched to sidelights when parked to reduce glare, and then forgotten to turn them back on.

Kithmo said:

As I said above, you cannot switch to sidelights whilst the car is turned on, when you move the switch to turn the headlights off only the DRLs remain on, no rear lights.

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I assume you specifically mean when switching the automatic lights fully off, only the front DRL remains on. But you certainly can switch to sidelights by selecting the relevant position on the switch. Front DRLs remain on (at reduced brightness) and rear lights are on too.

Swift said:

I've done this a couple of times too, switched to sidelights when parked to reduce glare, and then forgotten to turn them back on.


I assume you specifically mean when switching the automatic lights fully off, only the front DRL remains on. But you certainly can switch to sidelights by selecting the relevant position on the switch. Front DRLs remain on (at reduced brightness) and rear lights are on too.

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Yes I meant when turning the lights off, switch to the right.

I would re-iterate that when on auto headlights you can still use the stalk to control/overide the high / main beam, as per manual use.