[Melinator2]

Hello Freepers.

Please imagine for one moment you are driving down a lonely highway at dusk. Suddenly, in the oncoming lane, green front brake lights begin snapping on in rapid sucession. You are alerted to the bull moose crossing from their side and instead of smashing into it and dying like so many before you, you manage to brake, swerve and avoid the animal entirely. ..

Imagine you are crossing at a pedestrian light and you see a vehicle coming at speed. For an instant you wonder whether he has a foot on the brake? Then his green lights come on. Yes he has a foot on the brake. Is that oncoming vehicle about to turn left in front of you? Or does he have his foot on the brake? Yes he is stopped and his front brake light is green. It will go out once he proceedsl...

I hope that all freepers will feel free to read and consider my paper. I would gratefully welcome insightful and carefully considered analysis both for and against the proposition that green front brake lights would save lives.

[DannyTN]

So you can pull out in front of oncoming traffic that appears to be braking, only to find out they were just riding their brakes but not really slowing down.

T-Boned.

[fruser1]

Green means go.

[Lurker]

If you want to make cars safer remove the seat belts and air bags. Replace them with a 10 inch long stainless steel spike in the center of the steering wheel pointed at the drivers chest.

L

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Author Mark Lesniak must be paid by the word. That is the longest, most jumbled, incomprehensible mess of an article I’ve read in a long time.

Cut to the chase. “Put a green light in front of cars that goes on when the driver steps on the brake.”

My #1 Rule for crosswalks — DO NOT assume the driver is slowing down or stopping. Do NOT cross until the cars have come to a complete stop.

I don’t need a green light in front of the car to tell me that.

[SuperLuminal]

This verbose article is a waste of time...
It serves to obfuscate the idiocy of a green light on the front of a car...

There must have been a “satire” alert that was supposed to be in the title...

[Responsibility2nd]

Wow. Talk about your tl;dr.

I nearly fell asleep NOT reading this article.

[A strike]

Author and poster looking for a payday.

[Larry Lucido]

Why are the comments centered? Who left his tags open???

[Larry Lucido]

Never mind. Tags are closed now.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I read halfway through the article and they never got to the point.

[Lockbox]

Green is associated with GO or accelerating. These learned people are mistaken with suggestion of a green brake light. Just use a red light up front, drivers already know what the color red means!

[Nateman]

The article gave me an idea . Instead of red brake lights, have them green. They stay on when you are NOT breaking and go off when you do . LEDs last a long time so make the green lights out of that.

[IndispensableDestiny]

Keep your green front brake lights in Canada. I’m not yet convinced high rear brake lights help at all.

[AlaskaErik]

This article came out almost 13 years ago and I have never heard of this. Seems like a bunch of nonsense to me, like that couple that goes all over the country trying to make the case for a 10 hour clock.

[1FreeAmerican]

You put up a 10,000 word post! WTFO!

I got the gist of your idea in your comment...

[PIF]

A 1% decrease in the present worldwide collision population would achieve the same result ...

[BusterDog]

You’ll see them so many times in front of you and it won’t have anything to do with what is happening in your lanes and on your side of the street that you will just always ignore them.

Even if someone was paying attention to them, they would so seldomly provide any useful information to them that they would serve as only a distraction from other useful, important information, 99.99% of the time.

Imagine if you made all vehicles beep when they backed up. You’d drive through a parking lot to a cacophony of beeping, you’d tune it out entirely, it is useless.

Worse yet, you’d tune out or have covered up other sounds that would be useful for you to hear.

[Clay Moore]

My question:
Have you mounted green brake lights on your vehicles and if not, why not?

[humblegunner]

Get a job, you idle defective.

[Dr. Sivana]

At some point, extra information from lights become either an added distraction or superfluous. The studies that showed that third rear brake lights reduce rear-end collisions 50% were only applicable when no one else had them and they were a novelty. They sure didn't stop me from being rear-ended because an on-ramp traffic light in Madison, Wisconsin was malfunctioning and the driver behind me assumed I was moving because the light wasn't red.

I think there is a hard floor to how few traffic accidents occur using human agents driving, and we are close to it. Most accidents now are NOT the result of lack of information conveying features, but of people texting while driving, driving recklessly, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or just plain not paying attention.

To me a bigger problem might even be a new generation trusting GPS and car electronics more than their own eyesight.

Much of this article was spent detailing the expense of car accidents. We should also consider the expense of added required features, and the marginal utility of each added feature. First there was the driver's side airbag at $600 or whatever in cost. That wasn't good enough, so now cars come with 10 or 11 airbags, in case someone is in the back seat, or the General Lee flies in on top of you at a diagonal.

End result, the cheapest new cars cost $20K out the door. You can make a 1968 Dodge Dart (I'll spot you lap belts and dual chamber master brake cylinders and padded dashes required by then)could haul six people, room for gear, and keep up with highway traffic safely with proper maintenance for 10K or less. Multiply that by a few million, and we are talking big money (some extra spent at the gas pump as the slant-six car got about 20 MPG highway).

How about we lay off of more mandatory computers, traction controls, ABS brakes, even more air bags, governors, rear view cameras, mandatory high belt lines, etc. and let people buy the cars they want? The insurance companies can wield some influence, but only where there is a real return on the added "feature".