Personally, I wish Honda would have given us an on/off switch for the DRL, there is no law or requirement in the US that Automobiles have DRL. My main issues with DRL are:
1. DRL use lowers fuel mileage, higher wattage uses more fuel than lower wattage (LED's lower that even more), admittedly the decrease is about 1% but multiplied across millions of cars it is a significant amount of fuel.
2. DRL's were first mandated in Scandinavia where it is dark a large percentage of the time and DRL use in those countries where visibility is low due to low light and snow decreased accidents. In the US several studies have been done showing a small percentage of decline in certain types of vehicles, but the studies have been contradictory for Automobiles. The Highway Loss Data Institute study concluded vehicles equipped with DRLs were involved in more accidents than similar vehicles without DRLs.
3. All Motorcycles since 1978 have had the headlight (not DRL) on and DRL's in Automobiles has increased the risk of crashes for certain types of Motorcycle accidents, this was proven in a study done by the NHTSA.
4. The DRL on the all Accords except the ex-l V6 model (everyone wants to emulate Audi!) are not good looking with the low voltage "glow".
I am all for customizing your car and the neat thing to do is to have LED's like the higher end cars, but all these are style, not to much to do with safety. To each his own, I just wish Honda gave us the choice and installed an on /off switch. I'll get off my soapbox now.
