I agree that some vehicles styling goes way beyond sense or aesthetics and has become downright annoying. On a par with keeping the rear brake lights full on when stopped. Thoughtless in the extreme. My DRL's are low down and at the far extremes of the front bumper. Low and wide enough apart not to annoy anyone. There comes a point where there is enough light emitted to be noticed and not enough to blind other motorists. Surely it not beyond the wit of man to design a common system to satisfy this criteria. Remember before the time DRL's were fitted to motorbikes? Riders would cruise around on full beam, annoying the 'bejasus' out of everyone on the grounds of safety. I had this argument with several biker friends that to be seen, dipped headlights were more than adequate. I would run with dipped headlights not full beam, but plenty wouldn't listen and got into scrapes with angry motorists who were temporarily blinded my their full beam. A problem easily avoided. So common sense has always been in short supply.

Cheers Concrete

It's one of the few remaining areas where stylists are given free rein to come up with something different. It only needs to be different, not useful, an advance or even inoffensive.

That. Exactly.

The problem is not DRL, it's styling given priority over safety and common sense. Front indicators (ie post semaphore) were single items, or possibly co-located with side lights on the corner of the body.

Sometime in the nineties or early noughties, before LED DRL, stylists incorporated indicators into the headlight where, often, they were too close to the bulb to be easily visible. The VW Polo and or Golf were early examples.

I can remember paying £5 to replace one of my old Micra's lamps. Nowadays, you have to replace entire light clusters at a cost of hundreds of pounds and at the dealership, instead of less than 5 minutes by yourself.

They now seemingly lure us in with fancy styling and then fleece us because we have no alternative. Same goes for wheels and tyres (including spares, if fitted at all [though some still are ok, like your Skoda and a few others]), ICE and satnav systems.

Everything also has built-in obsolesence these days, and have to be junked because 'software' gets 'upgraded' meaning they can't work any more or don't run any useful programs.

If a car firm decided to build resonably priced cars that had long lasting components that could be easily/cheaply repaired/prelaced, whilst still making the cars safe and nice to look/drive, they'd be onto a winner, especially at the moment.