In all cars I have driven you must turn on the dash light or THEY COME ON WITH THE HEADLAMPS. With the Toyota system you see the dash lit and it is intuitive that your headlamps are on but as it gets darker you see your headlights are in-fact OFF. This has happened three times so far and I noted three other vehicles with their dash lamps on, passing me without their headlights on as well in one night last week. I drive 35,000 miles each year.

Since years of drivers tie illuminated dashboards to the headlights coming on this should be a significant concern to the industry. With 35 years of professional driving under my belt I suspect this condition will directly contributed to accidents where an oncoming car without lights will not be seen by someone pulling into its path or as occurred on I-95 last week in NJ I watched a car approaching at night without his or her lights on yet I was going to pull into that lane. As he passed on my left - you could see his dash lights were on. The scary part was this was a black car and it was so dark I could not make out the type as he passed. I pulled behind him to flash my lights but he simply pulled away without ANY TAILIGHTS - something I had never considered for that additional warning of a car ahead does not come into play. Yikes.