auto lights

[klinwart]

I guess it's not wise to drive with auto mode lights, as today I was driving in daytime albeit dismal with some fog, I got stopped by police telling me to turn my lights on, as dlr's were not sufficient. I had no idea that the auto mode would only work at a certain lux that did not include fog.

"Just an observation"

[trundlenut]

I think it says that in the manual. You also can't turn the fog lights on with the switch on auto. The car has a light sensor for the auto lights...

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[Auric Goldfinger]

If it's the same as the Octavia MKIII with Auto lights, If you pull the switch out ( to put the fog's on ) when in Auto lights it turns the Dipped beam on and the fogs

 

If you want the fog's on with side lights you need to turn the swich to the side light mode then pull the switch out

[Too Tall]

Aha! You've stumbled across one of the lesser known features of the Superb, and possibly one of my favorites....

 

I too wondered why the fogs didn't work in Auto mode, why I couldn't pull the switch towards me and have Auto lights + fogs on.

 

The reason why is the Adaptive Light System. When it's foggy, you need to switch from 0 (or Auto) to dipped beam (this disables the Adaptive Lights), then pull the switch towards you to use the front fogs. 

 

This is done deliberately because Adaptive Lights are no good in foggy conditions. The last thing you need is changing, swinging lightbeams when there is already lots of reflection from the dense fog. In dipped beam + fog lights, the light picture is fixed with added front foglights. This way there is less driver fatigue.

Edited 20 November, 2014 by Too Tall

[silver1011]

A good example of why we shouldn't rely on Auto headlights.

 

There is still a requirement of the driver to recognise the need for lights and turn them on if they haven't turned themselves on.

 

This is why the older Skoda models (including the Superb) benefit from the green dipped headlight symbol right in your line of sight in the dash, so you can easily tell if your lights are on or not when it's not dark.

 

Later models (Yeti and MkIII Octavia) now don't have this light so you have to look down at the light switch instead. A backward step if you ask me.

[Phil-E]

I guess the light sensor failed at detecting fog then...

[Superb170]

Maybe the technology has already been developed but I'm sure the adaptive/sensor technology could be developed to detect fog and adjust the light intensity accordingly. After all the sensors can already detect rain and road size etc. It might help eliminate some people driving around with fog lights switched on for no reason! To be honest though I agree with Silver's comment above and a bit of driver awareness is always going to be required

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[trundlenut]

I suspect that getting a system to work reliably and work out when it foggy would be way more difficult then recognising road signs.

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[Too Tall]

Oh the technology is there alright...just don't expect vag to install it on a skoda...latest audi's don't have fogs anymore, they're build into the adaptive headlights.

[trundlenut]

Oh the technology is there alright...just don't expect vag to install it on a skoda...latest audi's don't have fogs anymore, they're build into the adaptive headlights.

They're not built in to the headlights, the headlights work differently thus negating the need for fog lights. So the car doesn't sense when it's foggy the work just as well in fog as they do normally.

At least that's how I read the techno babble on the Audi website.

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[klinwart]

Thanks toeveryone for your comments.

As Too Tall says I don't have this proble, with auto on my Audi TT.

regards