Modern cars also always detect low light and crank up the dashboard brightness. There’s no longer a good clue to the driver that they forgot to turn the headlights on.
Drivers that have switched their headlights to the off position, the DRLs are "bright enough" to drive and not notice your headlights are off.
I see them very often, and for some reason a large portion of them are Hyundai. Maybe because the dash light, button backlights are independent of the headlights, so there's no real indication inside that your lights are not on, except the switch position.
As you mentioned, this mode is incredibly difficult to figure out your in.
What we don’t have is mandated automatic headlights. I remember there was a discussion recently about requiring automatic headlights or maybe not automatically increasing the brightness of the dash when it’s dark out. But I don’t remember what happened with it.
Not everyone drives an up-to-date vehicle and TBH, some vehicle owners do not care that they are a hazard, regardless of what the law requires. Here in Austin, when the police get in a snit, they just stop enforcing the law and even when they're not in a snit about something, there are parts of town where traffic laws are traffic suggestions. All of this makes for a somewhat hazardous driving environment at times.
Because for most countries in the world that have sun bright sun most of the year it is totally ridiculous. Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria. Greece, Italy, Thailand, Filipines, Mexico...
Those countries have ridiculous daylight saving time changes because countries in the North believed this hack was a good idea.
The darkness Canadians experience in Winter and low sun in Summer are conditions in Norther countries other countries do not have.
I'm curious to know where this list came from. Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines do not use DST.
Spain, Greece and Italy do use DST, as members of the EU I believe they are obliged to do so.