Lights required when using wipers

 

That’s what the sign in New York says.  We’ve seen the same sign in Florida with slightly different wording.  Something like “Turn headlights and wipers on when it’s raining.”  At first I thought it was odd, telling us to turn our windshield wipers on when it’s raining, but then I recognized the dilemma.  They don’t really care about wipers and lights going on together at the same time.  They just want to tell us to turn our headlights on when it’s raining; but if they only tell us to turn our headlights on, some of us won’t know to use our wipers as well.  If the sign reads “turn headlights on when it’s raining,” We’ll think they mean we can use our headlights *instead* of our wipers and then we won’t be able to see anything and won’t know why!