In the category of features gone but perhaps there shouldn’t be a foot-operated high beam switch or low beam. Today, if you want to turn on your high-beam headlights, you fiddle with one of the stalks on the side of your steering column. Most manufacturers have made it such that pulling it backwards will switch the beams, although some will push it forward. On many older makes and models, this was accomplished with a small circular footswitch located on the far left of the floorboard with one simple click to turn the high beams on and another to turn them off.
The footswitch disappeared from most cars by the 1980s. There are two reasons put forward as hypotheses for this change. One is that cars have become smaller and most have shifted to a front-wheel drive platform, which has reduced the space available in the footrest and under the floor mat itself. Another states that, for various reasons, it has become cheaper to put the switch on the leg and connect it to a relay to send power to the lamp. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that car companies were simply following trends, seeking to emulate and catch up with the competition.
Whatever the reason, with the prevalence of digital controls in modern cars, footswitches are just something from a bygone era.
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