That wacky parking light feature

I've only had my '02 996 about a month, and I'm still finding new "features". The latest is the headlight switch which allows you to illuminate either the left or right side parking lights when leaving the car. I had a 928 for years and that car would did the same thing if you inadvertently left a turn signal "on" or hit the stalk on the way out of the car (I think I even had a dead battery once because of it). I noticed some other German cars did the same thing. I always thought it was some flaw in the way the circuit was wired. Now I find out it was apparently a designed in FEATURE all along! The question remains however, why? The manual infers it's to meet certain laws...any insight anyone?

Parallel street parking light (so your butt is seen). Mainly a Europe thing where parking is ALL on the street.

This is especially helpful illuminating cars on the side of narrow two lane roads in Germany. Now that the 996 is a world car, I guess Porsche has chosen to keep this feature active in U.S. bound vehicles.

In the USA we have street lights everywhere -- in many parts of the world this is not the case. The light is great to use if you would be the first car in a line of parked cars -- or if it is alone -- especially usefull in bad weather. There are many times that I use it in my old MB. It was orginially on only one side to save on power - small bulbs just for this!