Brake Force Display Brake Lights?

[Dangermouse]

I built a race car with a guy that loved stuff like that. He made a quick how-to make one of those too.

http://jalopnik.com/238353/if-you-ca...the-safety-cat

Man, that would be disturbing to follow on a dark night

[OverlandMan]

Not trying to make this into a Winky thread but I did see this on eBay after reading this thread: http://www.ebay.com/itm/WINKY-CAT-NE...90e7f0&vxp=mtr

It appears to be a repro and certainly not as cheap as the <$6 one in the catalog back in the day.

[jangell]

Progressively lighting up brake lights is an interesting idea, although i think it would need to be separate lights -- simply making the lights brighter would probably not be obvious to other drivers, unless they saw the change in intensity as it happened. Meaning, I'd think it would be too subtle. You could make it so that at normal braking the light is fully lit, and have panic braking make the bulb super-bright, but I don't think that would necessarily be obvious to other drivers either.

I found some videos of the BMW system, which seemed to rely on an additional brake light (at least in the videos I found). That makes more sense than just making the existing lights brighter, as the brightness may be too subtle to read clearly. It also seemed to have three levels: Normal brake lights, normal lights plus the secondary brake lights, and normal lights plus the secondary lights plus flashing the HCSL (or reverse lights in one of the videos) at a rate of one or two a flashes a second. It seemed to keep them light/lights flashing even after the car had come to a complete stop.


I once saw a somewhat similar implementation on a motorcycle: when hard-braking, the brake light flashed quickly three times (strobed, really, taking less than a second for all three flashes), then stayed illuminated as a normal brake light. The quick flashes draw your attention to the vehicle, and the fact that it's the brake light made it clear that it was with regards to braking.

I also recall seeing a brake light with a built-in strobe on a truck. When the brakes were applied, the red strobe would flash once as the normal brake lights came on. It did this every time, though, not just when during a panic-stop. That seemed a bit more distracting, but it was probably done to keep people from crashing into the back of these specific trucks for whatever reason.

I haven't seen either of these since.


One method I'd been considering was using a cheap accelerometer (like in a cell phone) to trigger the "strobe three times" brake light method (likely with LED bulbs; incandescents likely aren't fast enough) when the brake pedal was pressed. Or maybe keep strobing until the G forces drop below an acceptable threshold (or until the brake is released). I'll have to get around to doing that someday...

-- Joe

[DMCVegas]

Man, that would be disturbing to follow on a dark night

You ain't seen nothing!



And right here are the instructions and schematics on how to build your very own.

[Tillsy]

I once saw a somewhat similar implementation on a motorcycle: when hard-braking, the brake light flashed quickly three times (strobed, really, taking less than a second for all three flashes), then stayed illuminated as a normal brake light. The quick flashes draw your attention to the vehicle, and the fact that it's the brake light made it clear that it was with regards to braking.

There are brake lights available that do that - quickly flash a few times before illuminating normally. Nothing to do with hard braking, does it every time as a means to get attention.

[jangell]

Ah, ok. I didn't think it was triggering every time, but it did seem frequent; I may have just misread what the motorcyclist was doing or something.

-- Joe

[Dangermouse]

There are brake lights available that do that - quickly flash a few times before illuminating normally. Nothing to do with hard braking, does it every time as a means to get attention.

I've seen that on some Hondas. Don't know if it was an option when buying or not. It was just the CHMSL that flashed, but I certainly noticed it while following the car.

Flashed 4 or 5 times and then stayed on steady.

[vwdmc16]

You ain't seen nothing!



And right here are the instructions and schematics on how to build your very own.

Ha that was made by my friend Phil too.

[DMCVegas]

I've seen that on some Hondas. Don't know if it was an option when buying or not. It was just the CHMSL that flashed, but I certainly noticed it while following the car.

Flashed 4 or 5 times and then stayed on steady.

That was a limited-time factory option. Honda, Toyota, Mercedes, and I think Saturn had them, but only for a couple of years. I, for one, absolutely hated this feature! It always looked like someone was trying to brake-check you, so you never knew if they were road-raging you or what. It was only out for a couple of years, because actually it's illegal according to the DOT here in the U.S.

If you're a bit more curious about this little footnote in automotive history and culture, have a look here.

On a side note, when we bought our truck the dealer installed a license plate frame that included a flashing stop LED brake light that does the same thing. Now this set up never bothered me, and I like seeing it on other cars from the same dealer that I've been behind. I'm thinking that in addition to the CHMSL on the D that I currently have, I might just install something similar between the license plate lights on the rear end.

[Starglider]

I've added fog lights to the lower rear fascia, using LEDs and a couple of lenses from some defunct DMC-12 tail light units. It's a UK legal requirement but I get hardly any use out of fog lights in normal driving, so it's an interesting idea to trigger them on hard braking as well. Will have to look into it.