Gen4 automatic headlight question

Bit late in replying.

I like the auto headlights on the whole and the auto mainbeam I've found to work well on most B and C roads, although they did get confused on wide open A roads.

However, you are correct. While using the auto headlight feature, you cannot easily, quickly or safely while driving switch back to manual or vice versa.

On slow country roads mainbeam will switch off in auto mode. I think it is calibrated for around 25-30mph, maybe as technically the Highway Code says you shouldn't use mainbeam in a 30mph zone. But it can be annoying on narrow lane type roads where your speed is likely to be pretty slow.

My work around was to have a light bar fitted on a manual switch. I used a square/rectangular switch in the left hand switch panel between the wheel and door. As it is quick and easy to use without looking, you can just reach out by touch. This meant I could leave the lights in auto mode and manually use the light bar at any time. Should there be any traffic, it was only a single action to turn the light bar off, so no more effort than normal manual mainbeam lights. For me this worked quite well as I still retained the full benefit of the auto lights.

It says in the manual extract provided by Soeley that main beam switches off when the vehicle speed is below 21.7mph, in a 30mph zone or where there are street lights.

In the interest of research I thought I would try the auto feature last night on a mix of roads, overall they worked ok, dipped quickly for an oncoming car and soon went back to main most of the time. They also dipped for taillights even when the car in front was some distance and dipped when going through a village with streetlights, all good.

What wasn’t so good is they didn’t dip when a meeting a car on a bend, a couple of times and point blankly refused to go back to main beam on a straight road with nothing in front.

For the most part they worked well, if they don’t dip, it’s easy enough to dip them manually, but it was the time they wouldn’t go back to high beam that was the most worrying, especially as the road has a couple of bends, is on a hill and the road surface is poor, so it’s manual for me.

So on my way to the auto jumble in the dark this morning I was able to play with the automatic headlights on slightly bigger more open roads at higher speeds. I'm obviously normally not going fast enough for them on my normal routine. They make the disco lights of daytime seem decidedly tame. They were flashing on and off even for their own reflection off chevron signs and suchlike. No thank you. Manual only going forward for me, I can't do with them on auto.

DrRobin wrote:

It says in the manual extract provided by Soeley that main beam switches off when the vehicle speed is below 21.7mph, in a 30mph zone or where there are street lights.

In the interest of research I thought I would try the auto feature last night on a mix of roads, overall they worked ok, dipped quickly for an oncoming car and soon went back to main most of the time. They also dipped for taillights even when the car in front was some distance and dipped when going through a village with streetlights, all good.

What wasn’t so good is they didn’t dip when a meeting a car on a bend, a couple of times and point blankly refused to go back to main beam on a straight road with nothing in front.

For the most part they worked well, if they don’t dip, it’s easy enough to dip them manually, but it was the time they wouldn’t go back to high beam that was the most worrying, especially as the road has a couple of bends, is on a hill and the road surface is poor, so it’s manual for me.

So, I used the auto headlights for the entire ownership.

On a sunny day on motorways/dual carriage ways they would turn the headlights on as you went under bridges and the like, due to the shadow of the bridge on the sensor.

But from the drivers seat you don't notice this really, apart from maybe the tell tale light on the dash, so it didn't worry me.

The auto main beam is easy to disable, but sadly doesn't give you proper manual control. To get manual main beam control, you need to turn off all of the auto headlight features, which means the rotary end of the stalk, but you have to go past the OFF mode to do this and its all to easy to end up on side lights or something else. Suzuki did not think this through to allow easy flipping between auto and manual on the fly while driving. And being forced to go through off means it is dangerous to do while moving.

On roads like this:
 

I found the auto main beam to be superb. As you are running at high enough speeds for it to work. And it can react more quickly than I can when a vehicle is ahead. Be it rear lights or an oncoming car.

However, on roads like this:
 

I found auto main beam to be completely hopeless. It is a wide bypass type road with long straights. And cars in front of you or on coming cars it seems to completely confuse the system and will turn main beam on at times when I wouldn't want it, so I would flick the stalk to disable the auto main beam on roads like this.

If clear you could always flick it back to auto main beam, although it can sometimes be slow to activate, not sure why, it must be sensing something, but in pitch black at times it can have a delay of a few secs.


I think Lambert is likely on smaller roads, maybe more like this:
 

This is a road near where I live. You drop to about 20mph to go round this corner, as the road is only just wide enough for cars to pass each other in places. But you also get a lot of deer, pheasants and other wildlife too. It would always switch mainbeam off as you slowed, which was very annoying. as you go round this bend, there is a 90 degree left just after it. Main beam helps loads to see the road. The trees also make it very dark here at night. This is where I'd manually use my lightbar on roads like this.


Overall I found the auto headlights had more Pros than Cons, so I did use them. But there are some limitations and some poor design decisions by Suzuki.