My 2004 Buick Century'* cigarette lighter socket seems to be always providing power. I consider this to be a bit of a problem, because if I accidentally leave something like, oh, say, a dash cam plugged in, it'll stay running all day when I would much prefer for it to shut down with the rest of the retained power accessories instead of running down my battery. I seem to remember there being an option to disable this somehow via a fuse in my prior cars (an '04 LeSabre and a '99 Century - yes, I do seem to have a bit of a comfort zone w/r/t vehicle selection ), but I have yet to find such an option with this vehicle.

Is there such an option that folks here know about? Or, barring that, is there some straightforward means of getting that "shuts down when RAP goes away" effect wiring things in directly? (I know electronics and computers, but not cars... and I can't seem to find a useful wiring diagram for this thing anywhere.)

Thanks!

Welcome to the forums.
Yes the cig lighters/accessory sockets are hot or always on. I like em that way as I can charge stuff, while I'm gone from the car for shorter periods.
I just deal with it by making sure before I leave the car at night, things are unplugged.
An easy solution would be to find an accessory adapter with an on/off switch.
You can google "cigarette lighter adapter with switch" Would one of those be helpful?

I've left radar detectors/gps plugged in for days before I restarted and never had a problem. Those devices draw milliamps on a 600+amp battery. It would probably take several weeks for a small device to kill a battery.

I was really hoping to have this stuff shut off along with the radio and such. The whole idea is that I forget to do things like unplugging or switch flipping or whatnot, and I was hoping to avoid having that extra step.

If I can't get that from the cigarette lighter socket, would I get the same effect just pulling from the radio'* power? Or does it get cranky about drawing a little extra?
I've managed once before, although on reflection said battery might well have been on its last legs anyways. It'* of interest with the dash cam regardless because I prefer not to be auto-recording eight hours of the parking garage at work followed by another ten to fourteen hours of my driveway.