If you’re driving at night, it’s generally a good idea to have your headlights on. But once you arrive at a destination it’s an equally good idea to turn them off. Otherwise bored people such as myself may take a picture of your illuminated front end and write about it on the internets.

I got the call around 10 p.m. A friend was going to be stranded at a metro station due to a slight lack of forethought in planning his day. No matter. Like the heroic George Costanza going to pick up Jerry Seinfeld at the airport, I was up for the job.

I arrive at the Vienna station’s parking lot a few minutes before the train arrives. There are a few other cars there, but none are occupied. While I wait, four cars arrive in my area of the lot. Despite being a somewhat lit area, and the fact that the vehicles are not moving, three of the four cars keep their headlights on for at least the 10 minutes I was there.

I thought maybe I was not giving them the benefit of the doubt and they may just not have noticed the lights were on. But one was parked directly across from me, as seen in this cell phone photo. It’s not like we were in a barren field illuminated by floodlights. It was somewhat light by a few lights, but still dark enough you should see the extra bright parking meter, bus stop shed dealio or certainly the car across from you as some dude took your picture.

It could have also been a way they thought they could more easily spot their passenger for pickup. But in mine and the two other cases I saw, the drivers typically spotted their cargo long before they reached the lot and drove up to meet them.

Perhaps the best explanation was an attempted summoning of some sort of mother ship. Had I turned on my lights, we may have made an incredible breakthrough in contacting and attracting other life forms to our planet. Sorry. I didn’t get the Facebook invitation to the event.

But remember, always fork carefully.