I learned an important lesson last week.

[Peter B]

In a lot of cars these days the instrument panel is LCD, LED, OLED or some sort of similar display made to look like conventional gauges. If there is no lighting you can't see anything.

That is absolutely right. Actually, even in this day and age of cars having all these safety bells and whistles, they still tend to forget something - even happens to Mercedes.

When I turn on (well, not turn on exactly - more a case of press the button), in the new Kia Seltos I just bought, an image of the car illuminates, then all the warning icons appear - then disappear - and it emits warning gongs if seatbelts are not fastened, and finally the actual instruments that matter, like rpm, speed, fuel and engine temp appear, but they have to be illuminated to appear.

Then when on the road, it beeps if your stray over the lane-marks, and if you take your hands off the wheel to just 'test' the self-steering mode in 'lane follow assist', an angry warning pops up in centre dash saying "place hands back on wheel..!" Yet there are no red lights inside the bottom corner of the doors to show someone coming from the rear that a door is open. My 30 year old Celica GT4 I just sold had that. Beats me.

 

[Northern Spy]

Yet there are no red lights inside the bottom corner of the doors to show someone coming from the rear that a door is open. My 30 year old Celica GT4 I just sold had that. Beats me.

I put conspicuity reflector tape (or SOLAS tape) on my doors for just that reason.