Knowing how to best utilize your rearview mirror includes knowing which setting to use and when. We'll explain the day and night settings.
Do You Know What That Little Tab on Your Rearview Mirror Is For?
Night driving can be more dangerous than daylight driving because there’s less visibility. And when many of the cars on the road come equipped with incredibly bright headlights, it can make things worse. Trying to drive when there’s a glare in your rearview mirror is a literal headache that no one wants to deal with. Fortunately, your rearview mirror comes equipped with a setting to counteract the extra glare.
On newer cars, the switch often happens automatically. But on older cars you’ll have to physically toggle between your day and night rearview mirror settings using the rearview mirror tab.
Where Is the Rearview Mirror Tab?
It’s almost always located on the bottom of the rearview mirror if you have a manual adjustment to toggle between night and daytime modes. Sometimes it’s called a prismatic mirror, which just means your mirror has the option to switch between day and night modes. Just push it down to switch into night mode, and pull the tab back up when it’s daylight.
Day Setting
The “day setting” on your mirror is the default setting. It doesn’t reduce the glare from headlights. It simply shows you what’s behind you on the road.
The 2022 Mazda CX-30 owner’s manual warns that you should always check to confirm that your mirror is in this setting before you make any adjustments to it so that you can be certain you’re working with maximum clarity.
Night Setting
You can switch your mirror to the “night setting” by pulling the tab on the bottom of your rearview mirror towards you. According to the Kia Sonet manual, this angle of the mirror will “reduce the glare from the headlights of the vehicles behind you during night driving.” The manual cautions, however, that you will be sacrificing some level of clarity in the mirror in order to dim the reflection of the headlights.
To dim the glare from other headlights on the road, the mirror is repositioned so that the light refracts off of a different surface first to diffuse the light. If you look closely while you’re toggling the switch, you can see the shift happen.
Automatic Adjustments
The Kia Sonet manual explains that in cars equipped with automatically adjusting mirrors, sensors on the mirror will note how bright it is around your car and adjust accordingly to reduce the glare. There is an exception, however. If your vehicle is in reverse, “the mirror will automatically go to the brightest setting in order to improve the driver’s view behind the vehicle.”
So the next time you find yourself driving at night and frustrated with the glaring headlights of the drivers behind you, double check that your rearview mirror is switched over to the night setting instead of the day one.
Source
2022 Mazda CX-30 Owner’s Manual, Mazda.
Sonet Manual, Kia.
