Precautions

I drive a 1993 Honda Del Sol. It is the only car I ever bought new. It only seats two, but it’s comfortable, and it gets 40 mpg. It has required very little maintenance, yet it now has over 320,000 miles on the engine. I really couldn’t ask for a better car.

It does, however, have two known flaws. First, it does not have cruise control, which is occasionally a minor nuisance, but I knew about this going in and I accept it.

Second, it has no feature of any kind to warn you that you’ve left the headlights on. This has been a thorn in my side repeatedly. At night it’s not a problem, but if I’ve turned the headlights on during daylight because of rain, which stops before I reach my destination, it is extremely easy to forget to turn them off. I don’t want to recount the number of times I’ve had to jumpstart my car because of this, but I keep a set of cables in the trunk at all times in case it happens yet again.

I have a count-down alarm feature on the watch that my lovely wife gave me one year for my birthday. I keep it set for thirty minutes, and I start it whenever I have to turn my headlights on in daylight. If I remember to turn off the headlights, I generally also remember to turn off the alarm. Otherwise, if the alarm goes off, I immediately head for my car to check the lights. This precaution has saved me a jumpstart many times, including this morning.

I don’t know why Honda didn’t install a bell or other feature to notify drivers that the headlights are on when they turn off the engine. Our Honda Odyssey does it; my parent’s cars do it, but the Del Sol doesn’t. Someone overlooked something that seems innocuous but is actually pretty important to some people.