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Front Brake Lights Could Drastically Diminish Road Accident Rates
(bioengineer.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Japan introduced brake lights that increase intensity based on how hard the driver was braking. 20+ years ago. They tested it in the US and drivers found it to be “confusing.”
BMW has implemented this in the US market for the past 20 years or so at least. Under heavy braking, additional brake lights turn on. I believe they call that Brake Force Display. I’m sure they’re not the only manufacturer to do this, too
If Japan introduced that they never caught on, unless it's specific to an area or model of car.
90% of the things that Japan introduced according to comment sections on the internet never happened (or never made it past the prototype stage) and the rest was actually introduced in Korea, not in Japan.
The Japanophilia is strong with a lot of people on the internet.
I suspect because there's no consistency in the brightness of vehicle lights. But that's one of the reasons why I think an incremental light bar would be better, there's no variation between vehicles. You could even make it more informative by flashing the whole bar when you first brake, so someone behind you can more easily see how much of the bar is being lit up.