Because your life isn’t worth the extra dollar to them.
More accurately, if they added one single extra component like that, they would raise the MSRP by like $500. Because we live in capitalist hell. Therefore, it’s included in higher quality cars, and/or as an optional feature. Like most safety anything, they won’t automatically include it in anything unless they are literally forced to by law. And even then though sometimes not and say they did. And still up charge you for it. Isn’t capitalism fan-fucking-tastic?
They take the worst of the three options. They don’t eat the dollar, they don’t put it in the base model for 500 dollars extra, they lock it behind the big wheels, sporty engine, and wood trim so only the rich people have safety features that aren’t absolutely required by law.
I’ve driven rentals that put the brake lights on if you did not have a foot on the gas, and only lit a 3rd brake light when actually pressing the brake. Dunno why it isn’t more common tho.
Because a think called a “brake light” should light go only to indicate braking?
Reminds me of the cars that now have the reverse lights on when they’re just in park making me think they’re going to back up but never do.
Because deceleration is not braking and conflating the two is extremely dangerous.
Think for more than 2 seconds plz
I am honestly flabbergasted that people think this is a good idea. This would basically mean that the brake light would stay on almost all the time that you weren’t actively accelerating.
There would be so many more highway accidents. I heavily rely on the brake lights of the cars in front of me to drive defensively. They tell me when I should expect to put my brake on.
If brake lights turn on just because some took their foot off the gas, I can’t tell the difference between a gradual slowdown and an intent to stop, so it would make it way more likely that I wouldn’t brake in time to avoid a collision in a sudden stop of traffic.
Brake lights should only ever indicate that a driver has their foot on the brake. I absolutely must have this information delivered to me reliably. If the meaning of brake lights changed as recommended here, I would be legitimately scared of highway driving.
This would basically mean that the brake light would stay on almost all the time that you weren’t actively accelerating.
As I understand the idea of “single pedal operation”, taking your foot off the accelerator pedal initiates regenerative braking. If your foot is not on the accelerator, you are braking, and the brake lights should be illuminated. But the brake lights are normally controlled by the brake pedal. You are braking without touching that brake pedal; the lights will not come on.
OP is trying to solve that.
I suppose the main bulk of people misinterpreting op is due to how most people don’t think of EVs as the default and as someone who lives in a part of the US where EVs are pretty rare I assumed Regen braking was activated by pressing the brakes but hey I guess that goes to show my lack of ev experience and motivation to think about how driving one works due to how rarely I come across them and have the opportunity to even consider buying one
Ok i’ll bite. Because why? How can you decelrate quickly enough to need to notify the driver behind you without braking?
EVs have regenerative braking, where when you let off the accelerator, it immediately starts slowing down, quickly. But the brake lights don’t come on. This would make driving behind EVs safer.
Perhaps when EVs use regenerative braking, they should display their brake lights. Use brakes, show brake lights, same rule as before just enforce it.
Other than regen braking like everyone said (which really slows down a car almost effectively as brakes when set to the highest regen setting; look up “one pedal driving”), you can also slow down a car quite rapidly in a manual transmission if you skip a gear or two when downshifting. No brake lights come on when you do this, and honestly I think that they should.
Jake brakes in big trucks, but most of them do show brake lights now even though you just coast to activate them. Some drivers like to turn them off because it makes you look like a dangerous rookie in the mountains if your brake lights are on consistently while going downhill.
I would like to share this with you: https://youtu.be/U0YW7x9U5TQ
Declaration can happen through a variety of means. Simply not accelerating would be the first one, due to friction. But even steadily accelerating on an upward slope would decrease the vehicle’s speed, and you don’t want to give vehicles behind the idea that a stop is being initiated.
You’ve spelled out the entire problem but have come to incorrect conclusions. If you’re directly behind a car, it becomes hard to sense acceleration or deceleration of other vehicles. More importantly, the brake is often used to decelerate on highways and not initiate a stop. This all leads to a lot of confusion and ultimately crashes every year.
The situations you mentioned are exactly the problem areas. Not accelerating it slowing down, often quite quickly, to make an exit. Dangerous. Going up a slope may or may not change speed, which needs to be known. Again dangerous. Same with downhill which is actually more dangerous not knowing how hard braking is happening.
So we have the technology to fix this. We can invent either variable break lights that change brightness or zoned lights that tell you “I’m slowing down” versus “I’m braking hard”. We could fix this because cars are dangerous enough as is
