Occasionally, conditions present where burning your lights is inadvisable/rude. Drive-ins, for example: it’s cold; you turn the car on to warm up…and ruin the movie for everyone around you! Christmas light displays, etc.
…or you want to park somewhere discreetly,my inner 16 y.o. reminds me. 
Gotta keep the windows de-fogged, AND lights off!
I have the same problem with backlit speedometers that disappear when the ignition switch is off. I have accidentally driven a short distance at night before realizing my headlights weren’t on a couple of times because of this feature.
Back in the good ole days, if your headlights weren’t on at night, you couldn’t see your instrument cluster.
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My car has DRL and automatic headlights. With the selector in automatic mode the DRL’s do NOT come on until I shift into gear. I agree that cars should have a selector switch to manually turn off headlights (I use mine in car washes to avoid rapid cycling of my HID lights) but I rarely use mine. My car is so darn smart it just manages that whole headlight situation for me. All I have to worry about is when to turn on my high beams.
Nobody has suggested there should not be an override switch.
The default condition for the lights could ne ON, with a driver-operated switch to turn them OFF with the engine running when appropriate.
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