When changing an automobile tire at night or installing snow chains, portable stand-alone lanterns or flashlights are commonly used. Unfortunately these may be inadvertently left at home, used for other purposes and removed from the automobile, or rely on an uncertain storage battery.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,716,938 granted to Lee Barton Williams in 1929 does show a permanently built-in device on stand-alone headlights of an antique automobile which reflects light rays rearwardly along the sides of the vehicle. While perhaps illuminating the rear tire wells for tire changing, the main object of the device is to eliminate "any danger of the driver ditching the vehicle on passing the vehicle moving in the opposite direction" and reading "house numbers". There is no illumination of the front tire well of the automobile. And of course Williams is applicable only to modification of an antique stand-alone headlight and the concept could not be readily applied to modern day automobiles.