Oscar-
You may remember the original IBM PC/AT's had what was commonly called "The Big Red Switch" a power switch recessed into the side of the case, so it could not be accidentally tripped?
Back in the 80's I was called in to help with a double-shift project at a shop, and sitting at the console of a six-figure piece of equipment. I moved my chair back a little, crossed my legs under the console, and BOOM the equipment all went dark. Someone had cleverly put the master power switch, a Big Red Switch, in a recess under the knee-hole of the console. Where no one could accidentally touch it.
Unless they crossed their legs. Ooops.

Or you may have seen classic Jaguars. They all originally had toggle switches on the dashboard. And after enough people got impaled on the toggle switches, those were all replaced in newer models by rocker switches.

These things are not new. Audi simply was sloppy with their "human factors" design, and has been too arrogant to make a simple correction. (Like putting a collar around the switch, or recessing it.)

 

A google search led me to this thread - since we just bought a 2018 Q7 and for some reason the light switch mysteriously was "off" when we left it in Auto when we left the car. I saw the discussion in this thread ( several years old ) about bumping the switch, which seems undo able to me. Was there any resolution to what might cause this ?

 

Short solution:
1-Duct tape over switch.
2- Buy Ford
3- Buy Chevy
4- Get plastic surgery to shorten your incredibly long leg bones.
5- Stop being a cheapskate, let the chauffeur deal with it.

"This is how we will build a car, and you will learn to drive it correctly."

 

My wife mentioned this exact behavior on her 2014 Q5 to me this week. Gremlins?

 

Just got an 2018 Q7 and this has happened to me at least twice a week for the last month. I am tiny- there is no way my knee is hitting that switch. And if there are this many people on this forum talking about it, there are a lot more it is not happening to. There has to be a solution.

 

OK, you are right. Your knee is not hitting the switch, I've been coming around late at night and turning it off, just to goof on you. But if you get in the habit of leaving a good bottle of single malt scotch next to the car every night, I'll leave the light switch alone.

There are more mundane solutions. If I had a 3D printer and a 3D scanner, I could just make a "guard collar" that ran in a circle around the light switch and extended about 1/2" out from the dash. Of course, that might interfere with some of the other labels and whatnot, but that's how these things are done, industrially.

Guarded switches are old news. Moving switches to different locations (Audi had plenty of years to change the dash layout, but that costs money) are also old news.

The only "real simple" solution is to find an aesthetically pleasing kind of duct tape and just cover the damned thing over. Or, to install a clear plastic cover over the entire switch, hinged perhaps at the top, so you'd have to flip the cover UP to access the switch. Or use something like a Dremel tool to cut a "keyway" into the switch and the surround, then insert a "key" that had to be removed to allow the switch to rotate.

Plenty of old solutions to this kind of problem. None really aesthetic unless you consider "Gift wrap that bottle of scotch, please" to count.(G)

 

I've had my 2016 SQ5 for just under a year, and I've been having this problem off and on for about 3 months now...I seriously thought that my car was being somehow broken into and someone was leaving a message or something...kind of like how in mafia movies they break into your car and leave your windshield wipers in the 'on' position so you get a subtle, yet startling, message. After this started happening, I would go out of my way to make sure I left the lights in the 'auto' position when I exited the vehicle, and although I'm the type of person who is acutely aware if anything in the car is bumped, to make sure I wasn't somehow hitting the switch with something else. Well, last night was heavy rainfall and I was driving at night. When I got out of my car I left the switch in auto, went to the passenger side to get the food out, locked up as usual, and this morning opened my door to find the lights had moved back to off. I sat down and stared at it in disbelief, convinced that if someone is not fecking with me, then it has to be a glitch in the car somehow. Well it looks like the latter possibility has been discounted per this thread. It's seriously eerie to find this many people over the past years with the same model having the same problem. It's much more than just a bunch of clumsy people bumping a poorly placed light switch perfectly into 'off' over and over and never noticing it...it is much more indeed.

 

I really like the "lipstick" idea on the switch. Apply a little to the switch and after a day or two of driving check your pant legs (knees) for lipstick marks.....nuff said!......................NOW lets talk about the new re-designed 2019 Q3.......

 

"It's much more than just a bunch of clumsy people bumping a poorly placed light switch perfectly into 'off' "
No doc, it really isn't anything more than that.
The people aren't at all unusual, although they may tend to have longer thigh bones, or be shorter so they sit closer to the dash. But that's still all within the range of normal.
The switch going perfectly into "off" isn't unusual either. If the top portion of the switch is hit, moving leftward, there's only one place for it to go, and that's the "off" position. And anyone exiting the car will be moving "left". So, there's nothing odd about the way that it is always being turned perfectly off--that's the only direction and position it can be pushed into.

The switch being in a bad location is nothing more than poor ergonomic design, amateur night with an inexperienced "human design factors" designer. Perhaps you have heard of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant incident? That made "design" into a big news item. The nuclear industry found that when the control valve handles all look alike, folks will pull the wrong handle. So they literally changed to BEER TAPS to get some fast off-the-shelf very different handles. Go to any bar, look at the pull handle on the Budwiser tap and the one ext to it. One many be red and round, the other square and blue. You just can't mix them up. That's considered PROPER design.

Or, from the same incident, they looked at how control gauges are made. We tend to use round ones, with the "correct" operating position being anywhere on the dial. So you need to remember, this needle should be at 9, that one should be at 11, the next one should be at 2....Except the Brits and some other folks knew that if you used vertical gauges instead (basically the same mechanism but you're looking at it from the edge) and you rotated them so "normal" always put the needle in the center of the scale? One glance even with a tired eye could tell you that everything was normal--or something was out of line.

In the same way, classic Jaguars used to have toggle switches on the center dash console. People got impaled on them in accidents, and that's why we all use rocker switches now. No way to get impaled on a rocker switch.

Putting a RAISED rotary switch on the dashboard, instead of a RECESSED or COLLARED one, is simply poor design. Putting it in a location where legs can and will sometimes brush against it and operate it?

Yeah, there was a certain WW2 heavy bomber that was infamous because the bomb release switches were mounted next to the landing gear switches, and pilots taking off before dawn sometimes literally dropped their bomb load while trying to take off, because they hit the wrong switches.

The problem is THAT old and THAT well known. Audi screwed up, they could have changed the switch design or offered a collar for it. But that would mean admitting they screwed up. If you know someone with a 3D printer and some time on their hands, this is a good opportunity for a little cottage business.

 

This has happened to me so many times which is why I am researching it and came across this forum. I drive a 2013 Audi Q5. There is no possible way my knees are hitting the switch! I'm 5'1 and my knees aren't even close to the dash when I'm getting in our excitex the car! It only happens when I take a 12 hr shift at the hospital. Don't tell me it's a ghost or my knees! I want answers!