this is ONLY an idea, and I wanted some opinions... ok

now, say your cruising along, and all of a sudden u slam on your brakes, and the dude behind u, not paying attention nails u. now u have damage, and regardless of insurence, its aggrevation, and a vehical is never the same afterward.

ok so heres my idea. when u step on ur breaks, ur break lights come one, but when u STAND on your brake pedal, another set of lights come on... maybe a different type of bulb, like say LED's or just a regular bulb for the 3rd socket some of us have.

my theory on this is; people may see your brake lights, but because theiur life is hectic they see it but it doesnt click. the second set for when your slamming that pedal, would be a another set of lights that come on, its different from normal lights and gets your attention, much like how LEDs with their instant on off.

good idea or no? and how difficult would it be to implement it?

 

thats actually not a bad idea... have a sensor so that when the brakes are past a certain point for so long another set of lights either truns on and flashes really fast or something...

buick has their third brake light that flashes three times then its constant when you hit the brakes just to alert the people behind you...

 

oh theres a thought. infact theres 2 empty sockets in my 3rd brake light i could readilt tap into along with the 2 in my tails

 

Mine would be on all the time then! Good idea but in the real world it would not help at all.

 

some street bikes havem when you put on brakes it makes the brakelights blink, like a turn signal I wish I new how to do it to my 3rd brake light

 

on bikes it is a simple module you can buy on the internet, i though about getting it for my bike but decided not to.

idea... on the BMW 7 series the brake lights on the trunk light up when the driver hits his breaks hard, like an emergency stop. you could have a secondary set of lights that turned on when the break pedal is fully depressed, would require some type of switch that was touched when the break pedal was fully depressed, or something like that

 

yea some kind of switch that will trigger the 3rd brake light (or the tails) to flash from a strobe module....

 

ive thought about it before, but if the person behind you is not paying attention to see your brakelights and notice your slowing down, they wont notice EXTRA brake lights, or even know what they are for. its a neat idea, but not something i will be doing

 

actually, i think flashing is considered motion and since humans pick up motion before anythng else itll probably make someone more likly to look up....

 

wouldnt the lights lighting up be the same type of motion? or the car in front of them getting a lot closer? im not arguing, just saying. The best idea i have seen is the flashing third brake light, but when i see one of those i just get annoyed. i think if it was something that would really make a difference, the car manufacturers would have implemented it by now.

still though, dont let that stop you from trying it, i could definately appreciate the engineering in it. you could use a simple adjustable pressure activated switch in a brake line to do it.

 

i see what you mean but im thinking along the lines of how a lightbar (police/fire) has the quick flashes and it just draws your eyes towards it...

also i think youve got the subject a little confused, or im talking about something diffrent, but were trying to think of something so that the driver behind you will know that your slamming your brakes on, because having the brakes barly pressed and haveing them slammed down looks no diffrent from behind... so were trying to think of a way so that they know the brakes are being slammed on and that they should be prepared for a quick stop more then to get the drivers attention taht your braking...

 

right, im thinking the same thing

 

I've seen a alot of the 98-05 Tahoes w/ this blinking feature...Could you go to a junk yard and wire that to our 3rd brake???

 

Interesting idea but, some research was done on the new strobe lights and though the results weren't proven some researchers think that people are actually attracted to the strobe lights. The example they used was more cop cars are hit on the side of the road with strobes than the ones with standard lights. It may be just junk science but, I figured it was an interesting concept.

 

Hook into when the ABS Comes on?

 

you would have to tie something in to the psi on the brake lines.

 

probably the easiest thing to do would be to have some kind of a momentum switch. It could detect when you brake really hard. but it would still take a lot of work to do.

 

I swear I read something about the blinky module messing with your ABS function, or some other important function with the truck. I can't remember where, it might even be on this site.

I once thought long ago about the light getting brighter the harder you stepped on the pedals. That thought faded when my Dad smacked me and said the lights lit up at night with the regular lights. Then I had my 3rd birthday.

All in all about the idea, if you have to stop in all of that 'sudden', there isn't gonna be time for someone behind you that isn't paying attention to say and register, "Hey, they have extra lights, I need to stop...again." Boom, too late by then.

 

so this myth was busted... not worth it

 

yeah I'd have to agree with swoop, if i saw a blinking light on the back of a vehicle behind me, I'd be like, "ooh, it blinks" SMASH!!

 

The hardest part is going to be the switch. I don't think a pressure switch is practical simply because "how in the hell are you going to do that. That would limit you to s mechanical switch on the pedal similar to the one you already have on there. It would take a lot of custom fabricating to make it work but it is doable.

Now, as for how effective it will be... I don't see it being worth the effort it will take. Your going to get hit anyway. LED brake lights and even better the ones with a flicker like Whelen's Signal-Alert are the best I've found.

 

I have seen that module before. It's more for cars, but depending on how hard you are braking, more or less of the lights light up. It's a strip of LEDs and they light up from the center outwards. Don't remember where I saw it, but I also thought it was pointless because if they don't see you braking, telling them how hard you are braking is kinda pointless.

 

The switch would be easy to make using an inertia switch and a latching relay. once the switch makes contact on hard braking it would latch the relay sending power to your aux lights until you let off the brakes resetting the relay.

 

good points made in this thread.

if you have some cool light display then it might end up being worse. when somebody realizes that your lights vary depending on how hard you are breaking then they will pay more attention to the lights themselves then what they are telling you to do. maybe just adding another brake light on the tailgate would do the job. my grandpa has like a mid 90's dodge dakota. this third break light is located on the tailgate(stock item), just another idea

 

To let you know where I'm coming from with my two cents...I have both rear ended and been rear ended as well as studied human eye response to flashing lights and such and I've been pondering this same idea. Rather than messing with brake line pressure or pedal position I would use an accelerometer to trigger the lights when the car started decelerating as it might during hard braking. This would be more effective and most likely be cheaper than trying to trigger off of the brake system. I noticed a lot of cars in Atlanta with the flasher in the 3rd brake light during the time I've spent up there and I can't say it would have gotten my attention if I wasn't watching where I was going. If anything I think it would be more dangerous because of the low frequency and duty cycle. The strobes on emergency vehicles always seem to catch my eye though. It seems I can see an accident a mile away if there are emergency vehicles around. If the guy following me is turned around yelling at his kids or picking his coffee mug out of the floor, he is probably going to hit me no matter what...but I figure 50W worth of red strobe light doing its thing in addition to my brake lights wouldn't make him more likely to hit me...so why not?... If you can get him to remember a fraction of a second earlier that he is supposed to be watching the road it might make a difference. Either that or it will scare the hell out of him and he rolls his car into the trees instead of hitting me...

I dunno how effective it would really be, but it would look cool either way