Have you ever been behind a car with a driver that has one foot on the brakes and the other on the gas. It seems to resemble the effect you are looking for and incredibly distracting and annoying. When brake lights go on you expect them to be making a stop or rapid deceleration so you do the same as well as the people behind you and all of the sudden you are speeding up, slowing down, back and forth. It's becomes a terrible way to drive. The reason we have 2 eyes is to be able to judge these things and it works fine if you aren't driving distracted.
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Some EVs and hybrids have a 'one foot driving' mode where if you take your foot off the gas, it does start to actively brake and you will eventually come to a complete stop. Technology Connections did a video on it a little while back, showing how it can be bad if the brake lights aren't programmed to come on in this situation.
What if you don't have 2 eyes?
3 eyes works just as well.
Declaration can happen through a variety of means. Simply not accelerating would be the first one, due to friction. But even steadily accelerating on an upward slope would decrease the vehicle's speed, and you don't want to give vehicles behind the idea that a stop is being initiated.
You’ve spelled out the entire problem but have come to incorrect conclusions. If you’re directly behind a car, it becomes hard to sense acceleration or deceleration of other vehicles. More importantly, the brake is often used to decelerate on highways and not initiate a stop. This all leads to a lot of confusion and ultimately crashes every year.
The situations you mentioned are exactly the problem areas. Not accelerating it slowing down, often quite quickly, to make an exit. Dangerous. Going up a slope may or may not change speed, which needs to be known. Again dangerous. Same with downhill which is actually more dangerous not knowing how hard braking is happening.
So we have the technology to fix this. We can invent either variable break lights that change brightness or zoned lights that tell you “I’m slowing down” versus “I’m braking hard”. We could fix this because cars are dangerous enough as is
Technology Connections on YT has. Awhile rant about this. https://youtu.be/U0YW7x9U5TQ?si=SZaEzNCDKoLXhx83
A rant? Alec? Surely, you jest.
Alec would never rant about anything! (/s)
Because there are laws that specify when the brake light has to come on, and it isn't when the car shows down (slightly). You could be starting to go up hill, or a list of other reasons. The point of brake lights isn't too signify the car slowing, but that the driver intends to slow down. Which is also why it doesn't come on if you're motor breaking" (is that the right term?).
This obviously varies wildly depending on where you are in the world. I'm also sure there are some places where it would be allowed.
Which is also why it doesn't come on if you're motor breaking" (is that the right term?)
I believe the term you technically want is engine braking
Oh yes, that sounds right. Thanks!
Because there are laws that specify when the brake light has to come on, and it isn’t when the car shows down (slightly).
To be clear, the laws say when it must illuminate. They do not (in the US) prevent illuminating it for other reasons in any way. The law says the light must illuminate/burn if you are actively pressing the brake pedal, but does not prevent it from also illuminating if a certain amount of regenerative braking is applied or a deceleration is detected. Theoretically an automaker could get away with making the brake lights simply always illuminate (and that loophole would be fixed in days, so no one does it).
That is indeed US-specific. I'm in the EU, and here it's defined by when and how it's switched. Specifically, it is required to be tied to the brake pedal (i.e. then intention to brake) and/or the hand brake being pulled. It is not allowed to illuminate otherwise. But the exact specifics probably also vary by country here. That's why I emphasized that part.
EDIT: There are actually deceleration values in some laws, possibly tied to regulation of EVs and the regenerative braking. Since that isn't necessarily tied to the brake pedal when silmulating engine braking, but can be adjusted in strength at will (it isn't tied to the mechanics of the drag of an idling engine as it would with an ICE). A quick google told me that the lights are allowed to come on at 0.7 m/s² and are required to come on at 1.3 m/s². This obviously implies that they are NOT allowed to come on below 0.7 m/s². This still applies only to (pure) EVs, as far as I can tell (not hybrids, and not ICE powered cars).
Standardised is a funny word, a car manufacturer doesn't standardise. Laws and 3rd parties like ANCAP do.
When they need to do it to sell it with certain safety requirements, they will.
However, even if those happen, and car makers today start building them with that, it'll take a decade or longer before you'll start seeing them in majority on the road. So even if you lobby for it, expect time since I'd say less than half of all people buy new cars, so it's not until the second hand market sees it will it be commonplace.
Right now the second hand market is starting to see things like collision avoidance systems and they will often flash brake lights when emergency braking on behalf of the driver.
A related tangent is now that there are so many distracted drivers, engine braking in a standard can become hazardous. I often will tap my foot on the brake so the people behind will register that my speed is decreasing.
I beleive that should be common practice when down shifting to slow because it's not much different from braking without any brake lights. However, I've come to also trigger the lights even when coasting down in top gear. The slightly harder engine braking in a manual, even in top gear, combined with the increase of distractions, has me concerned about the same thing as you.
Because deceleration is not braking and conflating the two is extremely dangerous.
Think for more than 2 seconds plz
I am honestly flabbergasted that people think this is a good idea. This would basically mean that the brake light would stay on almost all the time that you weren't actively accelerating.
There would be so many more highway accidents. I heavily rely on the brake lights of the cars in front of me to drive defensively. They tell me when I should expect to put my brake on.
If brake lights turn on just because some took their foot off the gas, I can't tell the difference between a gradual slowdown and an intent to stop, so it would make it way more likely that I wouldn't brake in time to avoid a collision in a sudden stop of traffic.
Brake lights should only ever indicate that a driver has their foot on the brake. I absolutely must have this information delivered to me reliably. If the meaning of brake lights changed as recommended here, I would be legitimately scared of highway driving.
Because the brake light indicates braking, and is connected to the brake? This is already a perfect solution.
An accelerometer is a terrible idea to replace this. You would have to cover the car with sensors and tune them so that accelerating uphill doesn't trigger the brake light, and that braking downhill will successfully trigger the brake light.
Ok i'll bite. Because why? How can you decelrate quickly enough to need to notify the driver behind you without braking?
Engine or regenerative braking can very quickly slow down a vehicle but may not activate the brake lights depending on the manufacturer.
Or crashing, I guess.
EVs have regenerative braking, where when you let off the accelerator, it immediately starts slowing down, quickly. But the brake lights don't come on. This would make driving behind EVs safer.
Perhaps when EVs use regenerative braking, they should display their brake lights. Use brakes, show brake lights, same rule as before just enforce it.
Perhaps when EVs use regenerative braking, they should display their brake lights. Use brakes, show brake lights, same rule as before just enforce it.
That's a fairly complicated system to replace what is just an ultra simple switch at the pedal. The latter is even pretty likely to last the life of the car.
I personally think cars should have two brake light switches. one for when you're pressing the pedal at all, and one for when you're slamming on the pedal.
that way the people behind you know if you're just slowing down a little or actually braking.
Actually, a least some cars (probably more than you think)/have some sort of "emergency" breaking signal, which often result in the usual breaking signal blinking for a while. You need to seriously slam the brakes to see it though. E.g: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j_osu1WgGMU
There is also a nice technology connection video talking about braking lights for electric cars and in general, which can be dangerous.
I rented an electric car recently (Mach-E) and almost exclusively drove in single-pedal mode.
Thought a lot about this video as I was driving.
I know cats that blink the middle light if you brake hard.
EDIT: I'm not fixing that typo
Most modern cars now put the hazards on automatically when the driver brakes hard.
I reach for the hazard lights any time I'm about to break hard or if someone in front has done something that will make me slow unexpectedly.
There is a Technology Connections video about this xD:
Between XKCD and Alec, the whole of human knowledge's pretty much covered.
I would like if cars would somehow indicate how strong they are braking. Like a meter filling, the light starting to blink after a certain threshold and blinking faster etc.
Some newer higher end models do this. It's an emergency brake feature that flashes the brake lights rapidly when braking heavily.
Should be standardized or something similar should be
The brake light means “pay attention to this car”.
Determining how much deceleration it’s experiencing is for the driver’s depth perception.
So instead of the message being “I’m slowing down by X amount here, so match that”,
the message is “I’m braking, so initiate the procedure by which you determine then match my X deceleration”
One foot EV driving does turn on the brake lights when it exceeds a certain deceleration amount.
But most EVs default to slowly charging the car and slowing it in a similar way to ICE compression braking (which uses 0 fuel in fuel injected cars BTW).
Anyway regardless of how the vehicle is slowing down, the NHTSA allows for the brake lights to be activated by other devices that slow the car (not just the pedal), and the UN requires brake lights be applied if the vehicle deceleration exceeds
https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/R13hr2e.pdf
This is probably country/region specific but my car (Tesla) illuminates the brake lights when it detects a certain level of deceleration. Also my work vehicles (Volvo V90 CrossCountry and XC60) do this. Finland/Sweden in my case. My car also flash the hazards when it detects hard braking and I've seen quite many euro cars do this. I agree that this should be standard.
I feel like there must be a Technology Connections video about this.
Gosh that guy sure is good at talking about various types of indicator lights.
That's how the car knows to deploy the safety systems including the seatbelt and airbags