Virginia Tech students create "smart" brake lights for cars
It's only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you're stopping, but if you're slowing down, when you're about to stop, and how quickly you're pressing the pedal. The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights -- when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you're slamming on the brake, they'll all flash red. The team, led by mechanical engineering Professor Mehdi Ahmadian, has plans for the system beyond the lab, though they speculate that it will be easier to add them as additional indicators on commercial vehicles at first. If this pans out, someday soon we may all be tailgating a totally psychedelic light show.
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Build one
I built a similar device, that flashed the brake lights faster when decelerating rapidly. it used mechanical accelerometer, but with the advances in micro accelerometers it seems this would be an easy stick-on after-market product.
Mercedes did it first...
Benz's new Euro-model S-Class and CL-Class offerings are available with the company's Adaptive Brake Lights, a system that cycles a car's brake lights in panic stops in order to draw the eyeballs of trailing motorists to the rapidly decelerating vehicle.
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/02/17/nhtsa-grants-mercedes-exemption-for-f...
nothing new
BMW has had a similar feature available for years
Uh, BMW has been doing this for some time
I think they call it adaptive braking or something. The harder you break, the brighter the brake lights get.
Genious!
Genious!
It will be hell in traffic,
It will be hell in traffic, to watch all the turning yellow, every time the cars in front of you is slowing just a bit down, and then speed up again a bit, just to slow down again.
em, sorry america, but BMW
em, sorry america, but BMW made these about a year ago, and eh, have been putting them on all there new cars since
this has been used in new
this has been used in new jersey for years by buses and a few trucks
Very cool
Amazing! I've always thought that something like this would be useful..something do do just this....let the person behind know if you're just tapping, or stomping...make this time #5 that I've envisioned/built something then saw it in a magazine or website later on. I'm too stupid to live.
Dude.. as far as i remember,
Dude.. as far as i remember, this is already available on mass-produced cars for few years; for the "high-end" cars which use leds for break lights; it's not really a bar, but the harder you break more leds from the break lights light up. I think mercedes, bmw and audi have this (probably others). And also some cars have a feature that flashes the signal lights in case of a emergency break.