[arprocter]

A game I used to play with myself on the highway was to simply try and use my brakes as little as possible - when you see brake lights ahead it's instinctual to also brake yourself, but often if you have a long enough follow distance you can just lift off the gas.

Brake lights being a binary representation of an analogue pedal is another problem, although iirc on some newer cars the lights are brighter/more lights go on the harder you brake

[seanp2k2]

IMO if you have to brake on the freeway, someone made an error.

Cool about brake lights; I've wondered for years why they don't do this. I knew about some newer cars flashing the hazard lights in a very hard stop, but didn't know any were doing brake light meters. Any idea which specific models? I'd love if they standardized the messaging across brands and countries; imagine a new mustang where 1 vertical bar on each side means light braking, 2 means moderate, and 3 + rapid flashing means very hard braking. Not sure what standard would make the most sense for this, but the sooner, the better, so new cars can adopt it. It's way less useful / less clear when each car does it differently.

[bpchaps]

I used to ride a motorcycle every day from the suburbs to Chicago's loop (until a crash on the way to work. heh) and I'm not sure that I'd want something like this. As binary as it initially seems, there's actually a lot more contextual information to it than you'd think. The swerviness, the length of the brake, how straight their car's going, how often they do it, head position, how in depth their conversations seem to be, etc. Like a lot of riders out there, I started playing mini games to try and figure out what the drivers were doing to help with determining risk. For me, imagining the physical position of their driving limbs, as weird as that may sound, was the most help. Thinking the problem in those terms helped out and really pushed the idea that if their foot is hovering over the brake, then a lot of caution is needed. I don't do this as much in a car, and I doubt many drivers do this, or anything close to it.

I think that if something like this was implemented, then a lot of people would use it as a crutch and make poor decisions based on implied safety eg, "His light didn't blink three times, so I didn't think to stop." That, and a lot of new cars, for some stupid reason, seem to want to obfuscate the significance of brake lights by just having them be brighter versions of on-by-default lights anyway or similar.

There definitely is something along those lines that'd be helpful, but I think it might have to be all or nothing there. Flooding phone frequencies with white noise might work, though ;)

[Tiksi]

New Jersey transit buses do something similar. For light braking the amber lights come on, for harder braking the actual brakes lights do.

[arprocter]

I want to say it was first introduced by either BMW or Mercedes.

I've seen Porsche races on TV where you can see a strobing effect, although LEDs sometimes look strange on video

[stinos]

use my brakes as little as possible

I play this 'game' all the time, everywhere, and when it's time to slow down more than what simply releasing the pedal does I'll first try to shift down and have the engine brake for me. The latter not only because it lowers fuel usage but also because it makes me keep even more distance, which is the key point for me. It is just so much safer (hitting another car because you cannot brake in time isone of the most common accident types) and leads to much more relaxed driving without fast acceleration/deceleration. Only disadvantage so far: other drivers not understanding it and passing you in anger.

[iwwr]

Still, instead of wearing out the cheap & quick to replace break pads, you wear out your transmission.

[xixixao]

If you are shifting correctly that is not the case. The "breaking" is achieved by the engine, the wear on the transmission is the same as when you are stepping on the gas.

[thatcat]

It also cause pressure waves in the exhaust system since you're using the vacuum forming in the engine to slow you down, which is more noticable at low rpms due to the slowing of the positive exhaust pressure changing to intake vacuum frequency. Going from acceleration to engine braking at low rpms, such as in traffic jams, has caused a weaken seam in my exhaust system to break.