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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

  such as indicators in the same color as the rear lights, are perfectly legal.

My goodness this drives me crazy. Why do cars do this?

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Less lights is less cost. On European streets the easiest way to detect an American-designed car is that they only have one reverse light, the bare minimum. Only suitable as an indicator to the driver behind you. Ever considered trying to reverse into a parking spot without any streetlight nearby? Reversing blind is awesome!

In any European car you get two lights, not in the center but in the corners so you can actually see stuff in your side mirrors while parking.

For a long time many German made car like from Audi, Seat, VW, BMW hat just one reverse light. On the left side is the fog light and on the right side is the reversing light.

This is correct, though wat probably is meant is that US cars (or dual designed cars) have two spots with only the right one filled in the EU and a separate fog light with only the left one filled. I had a Ford Fiesta with only one reverse light and put in another to get a bit more light when reversing and my assumption is this is more common on US designed vehicles (though the Fiesta was designed in either the UK or Germany but you get the jist).

Of course now it’s basically a non-issue as all new cars have a night-vision camera when in reverse.

>on European streets the easiest way to detect an American-designed car is that they only have one reverse light, the bare minimum. Only suitable as an indicator to the driver behind you. Ever considered trying to reverse into a parking spot without any streetlight nearby? Reversing blind is awesome!

A bunch of Japanese compacts and subcompacts do it too and it was basically unheard of on any vehicle from any continent until the last 15yr or so when backup cameras proliferated.

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

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