If brake lights weren't automatic, the morons wouldn't use them either.

I work primarily in our downtown area. On busier weekend nights, it's not unusual to stop a couple cars an hour for this. Multiply that by three or four officers working the area, and you get the picture. A reasonably high percentage are drunk, but most are just oblivious. I'll stop short of saying stupid. The top three explanations are rental cars, driving somebody else's car (and they're used to a car with automatic lights), and the auto feature is turned off (often because somebody else recently drove their car).

I think GM has the best implementation of automatic lights: auto by default and can be toggled off, but return to auto when the car is turned off and back on. With all of the fancy infotainment systems in cars now, a programmed reminder to turn the lights on when certain conditions are met (time of day, vehicle in gear, input from light sensor, etc.) would be very easy to implement.

And don't even get me started on high beams. The number of people that haven't the slightest clue how to turn the high beams off or what the blue dashboard indicator means is astounding. I stop a lot of people for that, too.