Emergency Braking Display
Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and BMW have released vehicles equipped with brake lamps having a standard appearance when the driver brakes normally, and a unique appearance when the driver applies the brakes rapidly and severely, as for example in an emergency. Mercedes’ concept is to flash the brake lamps rapidly under heavy deceleration, Volvo makes the brake lamps brighter, and BMW uses “Adaptive Brake Lights” – brake lamps that use the normal brake light, plus illuminating the normal rear running lamps to the same high intensity under a panic stop, (activating the vehicles anti-lock-braking system).
The Volkswagen Group of manufacturers (VW, Audi,Seat & Skoda) also have a system on all newer models that will turn on the hazard flasher under braking conditions hard enough to activate the Emergency Brake Assist and/or ABS.
An experimental study at the University of Toronto has tested brake lights which gradually and continuously grow in illuminated area with increasing vehicle deceleration rate (i.e., increasing brake application pressure).
The idea behind such emergency-braking indicator systems is to catch following drivers’ attention with special urgency. However, there remains considerable debate over whether the system offers a measurable increase in safety performance. To date, studies of vehicles in service have not shown any significant such improvement. The systems used by BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes differ not only in operational mode (growing vs. intensifying vs. flashing, respectively), but also in such parameters as deceleration threshold of activation. Data are being collected and analyzed in an effort to determine how such a system might be implemented to maximize a safety benefit, if such a benefit can be realized with visual emergency braking displays. One potentially problematic factor in the implementation of flashing stop lamps in North America is that North American regulations permit flashing brake lamps to be used in lieu of separate rear turn signal and hazard warning lamps.