My neighbour has had a lot of personnal problems with his Mrs's mental condition and looking after three young kids.

He has a Ford S-Max and the sidelights keep turning themselves on!

The local Ford dealership want £110 to plug it into their diagnostic gear; and he hasn't got the money.
Anybody on here got an idea, or a clue? Is there a system reset to default? Any opinions would be gracefully accepted.

first thing I would check would be the sidelight switch, also it probably has a relay for them too

otherwise, we really need some more detail of the problem, like does it happen randomly while the car is sitting there, or just when it is moving?
also a bit more detail about the car, for instance does it have auto headlights?

The light will be controlled by a smart module on one of the data buses it could be anything the only bit of DIY/freeware/low cost software that will likely talk to to it is FORScan

http://www.forscan.org/home.html

The problem could be anything but before doing anything I would try a system reset --- disconnect the battery for 20 minutes and before reconnecting the battery touch the + and - cables against each other for 10 seconds.
The car may run roughly initially on restart because any self-learned adaptions will need to re-learn.

[Edited on 15/7/17 by britishtrident]