Virginia Tech students create "smart" brake lights for cars
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted March 26th 2008 10:36PM
posted March 26th 2008 10:36PM
posted March 26th 2008 10:36PM
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Perhaps it is a long time coming, but perhaps also with good reason. It needs to be taken up across the industry in a standardised version, and then million upon million of drivers need to learn then new sequence if it isn't to confuse everyone. To confuse one person is enough to get a lawsuit on your hands. Remember, the general public must be treated as utter imbeciles. For instance, cars that look like cars aren't the best solution to the transport question, but people will only buy a car that looks like what they think a car looks like; the technology to create advanced wheel-less driver control and feedback systems has been around for ages, but people like to hold onto a wheel and the past when they drive, because that's what they've (almost) always done.
kinda not new; googling 'brake flasher' gets you plenty. Simply adding brighter lights and maybe blinking a bit. The 'innovation' I came up with was a momentary switch that lights my backup lights so I can blink em to signal that idjit behind me that they've got their brights on. It works.
In 2004 a guy in my school made one of these for his A-level Design Technology project. His didn't have the flashing when you slammed on but it was still pretty impressive.
To bad people won't have time to notice how hard someones breaking when they are to busy watching the drop down video screen in the SUV in front of them. Want to reduce rear end collisions, do away with these.
Dang it, I knew I should've got a patent on this when I thought of it 15-20 years ago!
Anyone ever hear of a man named Preston Tucker. He wanted to do this in the 1950's
Green=go. Yellow=don't enter the intersection if not already in it. Red=stop.
Very simple very much not used. !Yellow means floor it! !We haven't had enough soldiers die in Iraq today so lets use up even more oil! Red means push your foot through the damn floor, come on, we can use up more oil, there are too many 18 year olds go faster ahhhhhh!
We have lights telling us what to do now, today, as we type. They are not adhered to by all too many people as it is. This is not going to stop Mr. and Mrs. gotta-get-there-at-any-cost drivers from screwing everything up.
Oh dear, and the designer so expected this to solve all of the worlds problems and make eveybody smart, I guess since that failed they might as well give up on life huh.
This is something that I've had many conversations about before... a great idea and I can't wait to see it on my new car.
A great effort, but certainly nothing revolutionary as pointed out by BMW and Mercedes featuring this type of tech in today's cars.
couldn't you do this with an accelerometer so that it could also signal when the regenerative braking slows the car down
There was a semi-exotic sports car in the 1980s that had this. It had (IIRC) five small tail lights on either side of the license plate holder and they'd light up corresponding to how hard you were pressing on the brake pedal: a little got you the innermost light on each side, a little more got you 2 or 3 lights on each side, and if you were trying to avoid that ginormous pothole and standing on the brake pedal, all 10 lights would light up.
Hey, but this is good, too.
San Francisco tried something like this on its taxicabs about 20 years ago as a test project. A yellow horizontal light mounted at trunk level and centered inside the rear windshield would come on when the brake was applied. The harder the driver braked, the faster the light would blink.
The was in the pre-cheap LED days so regular light bulbs were used.
They only need a 3 step light. 1 lightup for slowing of actual speed, 1 lightup for slight depression of the pedal, and then 1 normal lightup for normal braking. I hate on the highway, when drivers brake, but don't really slow down speedwise they are just halting the increase of speed. Then like falling dominos, every person behind that driver brakes. I don't think you should have to judge/comprehend the number of LED bulbs lit up to conclude the meaning, the color should glow brighter.
Funny that you say you hate that because many people do that to mess with tailgaters, making me wonder if you aren't one of those.
Reminds me of that old story about the guy who hears on the radio about some guy driving in the wrong direction against traffic and him saying "one guy? I see dozens of them!".
Maan, I had that idea when I was 11, but figured most (common driving) people would be too stupid to be able to read the lights.
Drive, and read lights? Pfft..
Don't be rollin' with this thing. Most people are already programmed to stop at red, and floor it at yellow.
-Matt D.
In europe this would typically be illegal until it was approved, you can't just play with experimental lighting for kicks in europe.
I'm surprised it's apparently not so in the US (but I'm pretty sure it is in canada)
You know it shows you how bad things are when my first thought on this brake light idea was Great another way for police to shirk probable cause IE use this to pull you over. Hmm buddy you flashed red there but I did not see a reason for you to be hitting the brakes that hard :-( Great! :-(
Also I would leave the lights alone. Pretty soon people will make decisions based on those colors and those decisions could kill. If brake lights are on ASSUME the worst. Period. What happens when someones car malfunctions and they SLAM on the brakes and you only see the slight glow because the electronics screwed up and do not even touch your brakes thinking oh he just touched his ped....crack oops :-) get it? :-)
obviously these students are dumb because the idea has existed as an available product for years so please engadget remove this story and be made fun of no longer!
Chris Taylor is right, these will only hurt people. This is the same reason I removed the airbags from my Benz, I figure that having them is only a comfort for me to drive faster and hit trees so I drive much better without.
I outlined plans for a device AWFULLY similar in Jan this year after years of failure to reach OEM's without a patent (or US$25k for a proper patent). Details can be seen at:
http://www.autoindustryforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=716
Looks like I'm about to play the Patent game! I patented this yeaaars ago.
I think GM had this idea many years ago and no body thought it was a good enough idea to put to use.
I think cars should have a brake light in the front as well -- just one, and fairly small -- so that people turning can tell if oncoming traffic is stopping, or going to run the intersection when the lights turn yellow or red.
Gotta a Great Idea,
Just add some bionic earphones to your invention and tape it to your Mortgage Broker / Bankers head, and watch the colors modulate when he tries to rip you off when he begins to explain your new home loan.
Yellow = he's Fibbing, Red = he's LYING, so you will know when to "Hit the Brakes" and then smack him up the side of his head and then stick it up his ass so we will all know when to avoid these trained monkey thieves in the night when they glow in the dark, like a lightening bug...!
Think of the BILLIONS of dollars you will save the Federal Reserve from not having to bail out all of these jackasses with your tax dollars...!
Feel free to add this additional use to your current patent and donate the proceeds to Hokie Nation Rules...! 79 VPI Grad.
BMW and Benz have adaptive brake lamps, VW's turn the hazards on if you slam on the brakes. That said, this idea is pretty good, imo.