What's safer during the day - DRL or headlights ?

I would go with the DRLs.
Avoid the parking lights - not nearly as visible; and the high beams - they will blind oncoming cars even in daylight. It will take more electricity to run the headlights as you'll be using the tail lights as well.

 

Not as much as hospital bills or increased insurance premiums.

My work Prius is a lowly 2010, so I don't have automatic lights.
My work Prius is also a work car, and we have a lights-on rule....so that makes it easy.
My car has 110,000 miles on it and I'll bet that the light switch hasn't been cycled more than a few dozen times.

Anybody that suggests that there is real-world difference between operating a car with the lights on and operating the same car with them off is probably overstating that difference.
If it could be quantified accurately, it would be very small.....like a penny or two per tank....IMHO.

It's your car, so it's your call.....but I keep mine ON.
ALWAYS.

Good Luck!

 

Good thread. I'm a big believer in daytime driving lights, or full ON headlights. Good idea, even in the daylight. I could care less if it costs 5 extra cents at the gas pump.

And at night, dusk, or early morning hours before dawn I continue to see cars out there with no lights on. I don't know if these people are dumb, stupid, or just ignorant!

And it always seems to be the dark gray cars, or black, and even the light gray and silver cars are hard to see during those hours. I've had several close calls, pulling out into traffic and at the very last second I will see a dark colored or gray car come barreling through with no lights on. No common sense whatsoever.

On my Gen4, yes.
The DRL's come on with the parking lights. Most of the time. For some odd reason sometimes they don't come on when I turn on the parking lights.

I'm not sure what "cost difference" you're referring to.

Does using the DRL's or the headlights reduce the mpg? Or use too much electricity? I don't know, and frankly I don't care.

I'm driving a Prius. Like a normal car. I'm getting somewhere between 55 and 64 MPG. With the AC running all the time. And the DRL's on. And I'm in the PWR mode. What's not to like???

Some Prius drivers are too concerned about MPG, or. "Cost." Just drive the car and enjoy the car!
Where else are you going to get over 50 mpg on a constant basis?

Drive it like you mean it…

 

I'll use headlights (low beams) on wet /rainy days.

 

It's the law in many states to have your headlights on when the windshield wipers are on. That's something Toyota should make automatic.

 

newer prius have led drls, so the yearly cost is probably lower/

 

I think I saw Nissan was doing that on one model at least: once the wipers did (say) 5 regular swipes, the lights would go to low beams. I'm not sure I'm a fan of automation, but yeah, a good policy.

 

Someone please explain to me, how having your DRL's on, or headlights on can cost money???

Except for the occasional burned-out bulb, where does the cost come from?

 

...And if someone says, "having the lights on can lower my gas mileage", I'm going to scream!

 

To have the lights on the car uses power that would otherwise be motivating the car. (No free lunch.)

 

Is that why I see all these Gen 2 and Gen3 nuts driving around with NO lights on?!?!

If I had any hair, I would be pulling it out right now!

Is 45-50 mpg NOT good enough?! Turn your dang lights on!

As Fred Mertz would say, "oh for corn sake's!"

 

Over the last decade I've seen a fair number of second gens running with headlights but no tail lights. As far as I could tell they were normal brightness, low beam headlights. Not sure what was going on there, some sorta bug??

A Canadian spec car in good working order will always have some lights on; the DRL up here is High Beams at reduced brightness, which automatically comes on whenever the car's rolling and no lights (parking or headlights) have been turned on.

 

Go ahead and scream. It is a basic law of physics, Conservation of Energy, that forces this. The same law that throws out perpetual motion machines as power sources.

I'm not going with any consensus of one being known as safer than the other. Use whichever you like.

The DRL pair is 14 watts, the headlight pair is likely about 70 watts. You can compute an estimated MPG loss from this, producing a number too small to measure outside of carefully controlled lab conditions.

This assumes the parking lights are used with the DRLs, same as with headlights. With those tail & side lights off, DRL-only will save some additional power.

 

I'm not sure why you think it's high beams. On all the vehicles I've owned it's low beams, in series or through a voltage dropping module.

DRLs -CAN- be "dangerous". People forget there are no taillamps on, and also forget to turn on the headlamps, at least in the well lit cities.

But then we also have the morons who will stop at a green light.

 

Maybe this:



Excerpt from this page:

Daytime running lamp - Wikipedia

We're going shopping in a bit, I'll maybe snap some pictures.

 

some cars have low beams (my corolla had it), some cars use high beams (my RAV4), some cars use dedicated or turn signal amber lights (newer saturns come to mind), and some cars have no DRLs (like my prius). there are pros and cons for each solution.

 

No offense to anyone, but turning on the lights, and wondering how it might affect my mpg or the electricity used, never even crossed my mind.

Seriously, is that why I see many Prius drivers and they don't have any lights on? They are driving around in heavy rain, and before dawn, and after dusk, with no lights on whatsoever. I think that's just plain crazy and foolish. (Are they REALLY that picky? Or cheap?)

I rarely see an earlier generation of Prius with the DRL's on. I think that's nuts, in Southern California.