For those of you who do not like to have the head lights alway on - here is how to fix the problem. This is for a 1995 - 945 united states car. The control is the light switch. You can tell if you have a daylight running switch - It will have 5 prongs in the rear of the switch. Non-day light running switches will have 4 prongs (otherwise, they look identical). there are two fixes. A) go to a junk yard and get a light switch from an earlier 900 or 700 series car (the switch will have 4 prongs), and install it in your car. B)look at the back of the white connector that attaches to your switch. you will see that there are two wires going to a prong on the back of the switch at the 7 to 8 o'clock position. Remove the wires from the connector and move them to a slot in the connector that does not hook up to a prong on the switch.

Either one of these will cause the light switch to operate as man intended - when you turn it on.

I was trying to provide information about how volvos work. In rely to the 960 owner, that switch type appears to have been made for the 960 market and in Canada. The 940 and 700 series switches that I looked at do not have that option.

Now for the social commentary for you socialists out there. Daylight running lights (DRL's) have always existed. All you ever had to do is take your left hand and turn on your lights. No one has ever prevented you from doing that. It is unfortunate that you need big government to tell you to do something that you apparently have always known is good for you. May be the government should begin to mandate crash helmets. What I object to is the fact that there is no option.

Daylight running lights are effective in a very specific situation. This is a two to four-lane, undivided, relatively straight road where cars are traveling above 25mph. (If they were as effective as the governement claimed, you would see a large difference in the accident rate between night and day, with the night rate being much lower. We know that this is not the case.) They have little to no effect on a 4-lane divided highway or in a large city.

Volvos are safe cars, and volvo owners are generally safe drivers (go look at the statistics). I doubt there has been any change in the saftey statics for volvos with or without DRL's. There are many more effective things you can do besides worry about DRL's. Do not speed, do not eat or talk on the cell phone while driving, do not drink/drugs while driving, drive to the conditions, do not drive tired, etc. Driving can be hazardous. Do not let the existance of things like DRL's lull you into thinking that it will solve your problems. They will not. You are responsible for safe driving, not the car.

I want the ability to turn off my lights, because there are certain situations were I need to be able to turn off the lights. With the lights on and a bad alternator, you can drive 3-5 miles at 60mph (or a couple of city blocks). If you can turn the lights off, you can drive several hours. If I am parked with the engine running, there are cases where I like to turn off the headlights to stop blinding people/cars in front of me (or when I am working on the car). I have also been in locations were I was required to turn my lights off (they had big signs stating that - hard to do with DRL's). The best solution would be to get rid of the headlight switch. Have the lights always on, but have a separtate switch (such as a rocker switch) that will turn them off when you want them off.

To the air bag guy - air bags kill people. If you were a small woman (less than 100 pounds weight), how would you like to know that every time you got in your car, there was a thing in the steering wheel that could go off with a slight bump and maim or kill you. The governments logic for mandating seat belts is: we know they kill people, but our studies indicate that fewer people will be killed overall (if you do some reading, you will find that the governement covered up the studies done in the 1980's that showed that air bags kill people - just like the tobacco companies). If any car company had come out with these on their own with that logic, they would have been sued out of existance. What is even more curious is that you have not read glowing newspaper articles showing how effective air bags are - how many people have been saved, etc. It would be interesting to find out if they have had any real effect at all.

And yes, my wife made me disconnect the passenger side air bag. She was scared that it would kill our children. And yes, I alway wear my seat belt (but I do not think the government should arrest and put you in jail for not wearing one - there is a case before the supreme court on just this subject)

My first car, a toyota corolla gts, got the headlamps correct:

they would turn on if the light switch is turned on or if the ignition

is turned on and the light is already on

they would turn off if the light is turned off or if the ignition is

turned off and the driver's door is opened.

The car companies are in a much better position to make it easy for

the owner to leave the lights on all the time. If I have to remember

to turn the lights on and off, I'll forget and not turn them on or

or forget to turn them off and run my battery down. Yeah, sure, I

should be a perfect person and not make mistakes, but that's why I

use tools.

chris

I see you complaining about government meddling when you mention DRLs being shoved down your throat. The least you can do is blame the right people when it comes to US models. Your car has full time DRLs due to a corporate decision in Sweden, not some bureaucrats in Washington. Saab, Mercedes and Saturn (division of GM) did the same thing. Most other US cars wear them as dealer ordered options and American brands can be turned off by applying the parking brake. Personally, I think manufacturers should trigger the DRLs by the charging light circuit so that they don't illuminate until the engine has been started (not just key on) and would go off if the charging system failed.

Your claim that DRLs are useless on the highway is just plain ridiculous. I can't even count the times I've caught some jerk hanging out in my blind spot, or someone going 40 MPH faster than other traffic, or worse yet in rush hour traffic - passing everyone on the shoulder, except for the fact that their car had lights on.

Large fleets have been doing this "lights on for safety" thing for 30 years. Long before Canada and Northern Europe did their official studies. And they're paying the bills.

The interesting thing about the way Volvo operates the lighting relay lets you leave the headlights in the ON position all the time (on mid '80s and later cars without DRLs) and all outside lights, including parking lights, operate by the key. The parking light position operates without the key though.

If you were safety conscious, your small chidren would be in the BACK seat.

You're right about the dangers to small statured drivers because they sit too close to the air bag. It's a legitimate exception. Passengers are almost always more than 12" away (the critical distance) and >90% of the injured children WERE NOT BELTED, or even worse, sitting on someone's lap.

let me see if I understand your logic. It is the proper use of seat belts that prevents 90% of the injuries to children, not air bags. You recommend that because air bags can kill children in the front passenger seat, one should move them to a rear seat that has no air bags. What is the difference between a child sitting in the front seat with a seat belt and a disconnected air bag and a child sitting in the rear seat with a seat belt and no air bag????

according to crash statistics the safest place for a child in a car seat would be the center of the rear seat. If your child is in the front seat (no car seat) and the seat is placed properly (not moved to the very front of the travel) and the clid is properly belted in, there should not be much difference between the front seat and the back outside seat with or without airbags. It is main infants in rearward facing car seats that have been hurt (or killed) by passengerside airbags. The manufactures of these seats and the vehicile manufactures all suggest putting these seat in the back of the automobile (unless you have a two seater in which case you HAVE to have an air bag defeat switch for the passenger side).

The improved safety of the rear seat has nothing at all to do with air bags. Practically everything I've read concludes that rear seat passengers are less likely to get injured than front seat passengers...the middle position winning hands down as the best place. Go read the stats.

Since all the studies show how effective they are, why on earth would you want to disable them? Do you have an air bag override switch too? (Maybe you can just explain which wires to pull to stop them from working.)

On my 95 960 there's a small switch just below the light switch that controls the daytime running lights. Just use a small straight slot screwdriver and rotate the switch to activate or disable the daytime function.

Geez. I wish my 144 had daytime running lights.

Anything that makes your car easier to see seems like it

would be a good thing. The only cost seems like it would

be you'd use bulbs slightly more often. Where is the pain

in that?

I'm with you chris. I don't use my lights in the daytime to see, I use them to BE SEEN. I drive Volvo because of the safety, But the safest car is the un-crashed car. Those of you that don't like daytime running lights, don't drive in the daytime.