Life-Saving Technology: The case for a green front brake indicator light.

Greenbrakelight.com ^ | June 16, 2007 | Mark Lesniak

[Clay Moore]

” Blue is for cops, purple is for fire engines, JMO”

I have never had a purple emergency light on any of the fire engines I have driven in over 30 yrs.???

[Melinator2]

I have a F250 with a big deer smasher on the front. I have yards of room to mount lights anywhere I want. For other vehicles, retrofit kits and lighting packages can be made with modern mfg so slick you would want to have them. Ever seen a vehicle or truck lover who didnt want more lights?

[Melinator2]

If one looks in the regulations in their state or province, one can see which lights are prosrcribed from use. in my jurisdiction, fire engines get purple, and red etc, and I have never seen them use purple. But it is reserved by the legislation

[Don W]

A very similar idea was presented by a school girl during the Carter pResidency. It went nowhere.

[Combat_Liberalism]

Think of the harmful unintended consequences of putting green lights on the fronts of millions of cars.

“I saw a green light and I put the pedal to the medal...I thought the traffic light had turned green....that’s when I got T-boned.”

It’s a dumb idea that will never work and never be adopted.

[Clay Moore]

I have an F250 also but I have yet to even consider putting a rear center brake light on it after seeing the bogus fraud that they used to sell that.

And yea, I built it from the bare frame with a whole lot of parts from other things.

[Melinator2]

That does not suggest the little girl was wrong. Unless all the idea that took more than on push are somehow suddenly junk because they were not at first widely recognized as useful. like giving up smoking? there used to be people pushing that. Were they wrong because of the public’s inability to recognize that smoking kills?

[jimfr]

you’ve got too much time on your hands. An extremely important engineering term, KISS. A green light up front does not provide valuable information. If you need to spend so much time trying to convince everyone of a good idea, it’s not a good idea.

[Melinator2]

Awesome. I love my truck. She’s older (2008) but I did a camphaser delete and a performance tune and it can rock and roll now. It throws my 10k lbs load like it is nothing

[Melinator2]

You are thinking backwards. The green lights tell oncoming drivers that your foot is at least on the brake, just like behind. now pay attention and discern best you can what the driver will do. It make the communication more efficient, not less

[Dr. Sivana]

In that specific circumstance if you were presented with that evidence, would you support adding a simple set of green front brake lights?

I am not in favor of adding more government mandates. There is an added issue of red-green color blindness, which more people have than you might think. It is not a problem with traffic lights because position reveals as much as color. Red, yellow and white (reverse lights) have different brightness levels. Red and green, not so much.

I probably have a higher tolerance for the existence of traffic accidents, just as I do with the possibility of contracting the CCP virus and dying. Keep in mind, for years I drove cars that didn't even have emergency flashers (you turn on the right turn signal to make the point) and other times I have driven cars with bad brake light connectors and USED hand signals (which aren't even IN the current road manuals in AZ). My point is, I didn't feel like I was personally at great risk even though I didn't have even a minimal set of lights working, so I am slow to impose them on society at large.

A friend of mine worked at Maryland DOT decades ago, and looked at the studies, trying to make driving perfectly safe. His conclusion was that if we put governors on all the cars at 10 mph, we could get highway fatalities close to zero.

Years ago, when the third brake light was introduced, car shops offered add-on kits for older cars. I wouldn't tough such a thing, but obviously some people did. I wouldn't mind making front green brake lights legal (they probably aren't, lighting rules are pretty strict) for those who would like to add them, or for those car companies who want to add them.

Years ago, GM threw daytime running lights on all their cars, and lobbied hard to make them mandatory. Fortunately they failed. Besides issues in weak battery situations, they are a problem on military bases where lights out is sometimes an issue. Plus, of course, an extra set of relays and wires and switches, etc.

On a related subject, how do you feel about e-code lights? I ran some Hella e-codes on one of my Darts and they were GREAT, though technically illegal in most U.S. states unless NHTSA or US DOT made some changes that I hadn't heard of. I wouldn't want to make them mandatory, even though they light the road better, but they shouldn't be illegal in the U.S.

[Don W]

18 wheelers are very seldom the cause of a problem. It’s idiots cutting them off then brake checking. Try riding in one. You’re in a vehicle that weighs 80K+ lbs, and people think you can stop on a dime.

[Melinator2]

I see. i disagree and I think that information is not only extremely valuable but extremely desireable. Unlike you, I do not want to know less about what other drivers are doing. And just like I want that information when I am following you, I want it when I am facing you too! I dont know why you would not want that information and i do not know why you would want to hide it from others when an incrediblty over complicated item like a green light sending the incredibly complicated info that your foot just touched the brake. I dont think KISS means what iyou think it means. Why over complicate things with rear brake lights if we can see the vehicle ahead is physically slowing right?

[Don W]

The "best" was when someone posted a scrolling comment.

That was not good. Unfortunately, it looks like scroll is permanently disabled. *sigh*

[Clay Moore]

I love e-code headlights. I used to run e-code Hella H4 6014’s back in the day. They were superior in all ways to anything else available at the time.

The Hella’s had a straight line on the road and it v’ed up in the right ditch.

The only problem was pulling them every year and readjusting the old sealed beams at inspection time and then putting it all back again.

[Melinator2]

I dont mind the superbright white light stuff. I dont run it because some people are sensitive. I am on highway mostly and see all kinds of big transport and trucks running stuff that makes your eyes bleed. I just look at the road. It makes it tough to see deer jumping out the bush, but Deer Smasher... nuf said

[cornfedcowboy]

This article is a whole bunch of blathering. Takes them 24000 words just to get to the point. Good grief.
An indicator brake light in the front might be helpful. It doesn’t seem to be a priority though.

[cornfedcowboy]

I wonder if this was a college thesis. .

[Lockbox]

So if the driver can read the speed of the car and determine that it maybe braking or accelerating without a light, then why do we need a light? We just need better drivers!

[Melinator2]

lol same. I run a my rig right around 10k lbs (welder/pipefitter) and slowing it in a hurry is a problem. Leave anything more than a car length between you and the next vehicle someone is trying to jump in. so i fall back more.