Are brake lights at junctions the new front fog lights?
Discussion
Liquid Knight said:
DoubleD said:
Got to say that I am surprised that some people are so sensitive to brake lights
It's not about brake lights it's about failure to do the most basic thing leading to other failings. As pointed reiterated, repeated and now repeated again. Liquid Knight said:
It's not about brake lights it's about failure to do the most basic thing leading to other failings. As pointed reiterated, repeated and now repeated again.
and has been repeated over and over the technology exists to be sat in traffic with the engine off, not in gear, handbrake on and brake lights on. There is no failure on the part of the driver. If it is about brake lights then you might want the driver to put it in park every time they come to a halt to turn them off but it isn't (you just said so).
Inigo Montoya said:
Boosted LS1 said:
The sun isn't set at eye level in front of you, unlike an array of brake light. I like to look forwards and keep an eye in front of me to observe what might be happening.
Obviously this matter can't be resolved if manufacturers make it complicated for simple folks to hit 'the park' button or insist on making brake lights brighter then they need to be. Manufacturers seem to be a bit dim on occasions.
Lets debate it in a month or so :-)
We're talking about stationery cars. In other words, cars going nowhere. It doesn't take any effort to look away and not miss anything.Obviously this matter can't be resolved if manufacturers make it complicated for simple folks to hit 'the park' button or insist on making brake lights brighter then they need to be. Manufacturers seem to be a bit dim on occasions.
Lets debate it in a month or so :-)
And, yes, the setting or rising sun is sometimes at eye level. Shall we ask for a for a design in that too?
Brake lights are bright for safety reasons. Perhaps the manufacturers aren't so dim after all, eh?
I must say unusually put the handbrake on if stopped longer than about 30seconds.
I was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
I was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
Tony33 said:
Liquid Knight said:
It's not about brake lights it's about failure to do the most basic thing leading to other failings. As pointed reiterated, repeated and now repeated again.
and has been repeated over and over the technology exists to be sat in traffic with the engine off, not in gear, handbrake on and brake lights on. There is no failure on the part of the driver. If it is about brake lights then you might want the driver to put it in park every time they come to a halt to turn them off but it isn't (you just said so).dhutch said:
I must say unusually put the handbrake on if stopped longer than about 30seconds.
I was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
Ahhhh my eyesI was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
dhutch said:
I must say unusually put the handbrake on if stopped longer than about 30seconds.
I was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
Even plods doing it! Behold a whole bunch of brake light fI was taught to when I took my lessons (circa 2005) both for safety as it remains on if hit and foot comes of the pedal, and so.as not to blind people at night which was specifically taught to me.
However it appears nobody does it at all, literally 20 cars at the lights, all break lights lit.
As for autohold leaving the lights on. Sigh.
Daniel
kwittery. I was taught the same as you OP :-) and to accellerate to the speed limit!It's not the best photo, but I do 20mins a day down the Liverpool dock road, all traffic lights, all a sea of break lights, through the tunnel and home. Madness.
Yes you can look away a bit, yes you can cope, but day in day out after 8hours at a computer screen I can think of better things.
Daniel
Yes you can look away a bit, yes you can cope, but day in day out after 8hours at a computer screen I can think of better things.
Daniel
Boosted LS1 said:
Tony33 said:
Liquid Knight said:
It's not about brake lights it's about failure to do the most basic thing leading to other failings. As pointed reiterated, repeated and now repeated again.
and has been repeated over and over the technology exists to be sat in traffic with the engine off, not in gear, handbrake on and brake lights on. There is no failure on the part of the driver. If it is about brake lights then you might want the driver to put it in park every time they come to a halt to turn them off but it isn't (you just said so).On some autos simply moving the lever causes the engine to restart, which kind of defeats the start/stop efficiency.
In fairness though the big advantage of autos is in stop start traffic and simply braking to a halt and letting off the brake to start going again is both convenient and very smooth which is probably why so many do it. In my experience letting the car start rolling by gently easing off the brake is smoother than applying the throttle with auto hold applied where you press the throttle and the car starts and the electronic handbrake is released.
As I mentioned earlier in the US where autos are far more prominent, sitting at a junction without your brake lights on is considered a safety hazard. It is a changing culture as autos in UK cars are becoming much more popular and typically the more efficient variants these days.
dhutch said:
It's not the best photo, but I do 20mins a day down the Liverpool dock road, all traffic lights, all a sea of break lights, through the tunnel and home. Madness.
Yes you can look away a bit, yes you can cope, but day in day out after 8hours at a computer screen I can think of better things.
Daniel
Perhaps you should lobby DfT to replace those nasty bright traffic lights with semaphore flags. No wonder people don't think brake lights are painful if they're no brighter than traffic lights.Yes you can look away a bit, yes you can cope, but day in day out after 8hours at a computer screen I can think of better things.
Daniel
Edited by jamei303 on Sunday 25th November 07:20
jamei303 said:
Perhaps you should lobby DfT to replace those nasty bright traffic lights with semaphore flags. No wonder people don't think brake lights are painful if they're no brighter than traffic lights.
Nonsense. Traffic lights are 10ft tall, so there either well above you or a decent distance away, so while they are I'm sure far more powerful they don't dazzle in the same way. I'm not saying the worse is going to change because I fine a sea of brake lights slightly annoying, and I can see that in some cars the design means in normal intended use the brake lights stay on, but comparing them to traffic lights doesn't make sense to me.
Daniel
I drive a Skoda Superb with a manual box and electric handbrake. Coming to a stop (at lights etc.) will apply the auto brake and the lights stay on. Selecting neutral and feet off the pedals kicks in the auto stop and keeps the lights on. The veihicle gives me no choice in the matter.
My driving style is from Roadcraft and has been for 30 years with regular retests. I have had a number of police instructors recommend leaving the foot brake applied at the rear of a queue specifically to keep the lights on at the back for conspicuity.
My wife has a Toyota hybrid with a conventional handbrake. That needs to be held on the foot brake as it will try and pull against the handbrake which defeats the hybrid technology. The manual and the dealers advise this. It will allow you to put the car in neutral but that is not mentioned and surprised the hell out of the dealer when I did it on test drive.
My driving style is from Roadcraft and has been for 30 years with regular retests. I have had a number of police instructors recommend leaving the foot brake applied at the rear of a queue specifically to keep the lights on at the back for conspicuity.
My wife has a Toyota hybrid with a conventional handbrake. That needs to be held on the foot brake as it will try and pull against the handbrake which defeats the hybrid technology. The manual and the dealers advise this. It will allow you to put the car in neutral but that is not mentioned and surprised the hell out of the dealer when I did it on test drive.
dhutch said:
Nonsense. Traffic lights are 10ft tall, so there either well above you or a decent distance away, so while they are I'm sure far more powerful they don't dazzle in the same way.
Try sitting in a van next to a temporary traffic light. It will be at eye-level, and despite it being larger than a brake light it won't hurt your eyes unless there's something wrong with you. Brake lights can have a max of 60 candela. To compare, amber lights on the back of those mobile lane closure vehicles for highways ops must have no more than 800 candela "since this may cause glare and make the sign difficult to read".
I seriously worry about any driver who is caused hurt by a brake light.
Boosted LS1 said:
Now you're being stupid. Why does a stationary car have to sit on it's brakes. It's stationary or can't you see that? Why should I have to look in other directions until it comes off of it's brakes? i can see it's stationary. If a hazards present why aren't the hazard warning lights on? Go figure.
Oh dear. We can tell that things are getting a little too heated when people start calling someone else stupid for having a different opinion. It doesn't help win arguments, you know.Why does a stationary car have to sit on its brakes? For one, if it's on an incline. Then you have a choice between a handbrake, P on on automatic or holding the car on the foot brake. Most people will make a judgement depending on how long they expect to be stationary and what kind of brakes their car has. If your car is an automatic, cycling from D to P takes more effort than holding it on the foot brake.
So we all make a judgment about how long to stay on the brakes and when to reach for the handbrake or P. That means that we will all make slightly different judgments. That doesn't mean that your judgment is right and everyone else's is wrong.
Why should you look in different directions? Because you've just complained about being dazzled. So do something about it. Moaning isn't going to change the situation. Do something about it.
I have no idea why you are talking about hazard lights now. Brake lights need to be bright so they can be seen from a distance, especially at night and in poor weather. Yes, this means that brake lights can sometimes dazzle. It's a trade-off, like most things in life. We don't want to make brake lights less bright to avoid the minor inconvenience of dazzling stopped traffic and find that this causes more fatalities.
As you say, go figure.
Boosted LS1 said:
Thanks Tony. So a bit like riding the clutch on a manual but with the brake lights on.
It depends. In some autos with stop/start you can manage it with brake pressure. If you are coming to a stop but the traffic ahead has started moving you can stop but keep the engine running and just release brake to move off - just like pressing the clutch pedal down whilst staying in gear in a manual. If the wait is a little longer, say a red light then applying a little more brake pressure will kick in the stop/start - the equivalent of being in neutral in a manual with the engine off and foot on brake.Auto hold will allow you to take your foot off the brake with the electronic handbrake applied (works the same for auto or manual in neutral). In both cases auto or manual the car is in neutral, hand brake on (ticking all the boxes!) but the brake lights are on.
jamei303 said:
Try sitting in a van next to a temporary traffic light. It will be at eye-level, and despite it being larger than a brake light it won't hurt your eyes unless there's something wrong with you.
Brake lights can have a max of 60 candela. To compare, amber lights on the back of those mobile lane closure vehicles for highways ops must have no more than 800 candela "since this may cause glare and make the sign difficult to read".
I seriously worry about any driver who is caused hurt by a brake light.
I've drive a van and stopped at temporary lights cheers, it's fine obviously certianly doesnt hurt but also not ideal. Often also temporary!Brake lights can have a max of 60 candela. To compare, amber lights on the back of those mobile lane closure vehicles for highways ops must have no more than 800 candela "since this may cause glare and make the sign difficult to read".
I seriously worry about any driver who is caused hurt by a brake light.
Have you ever pulled up 6ft off the back of a set of lane closure vehicles, in the dark, four abreast, for a minute and a half, without thinking 'thats a but bright in my face' after a long day at work, five days in seven? I mean just because something is managable, or doesn't hurt doesn't mean it's idea. If someone wanged a high power torch in your face as a laugh, you would get over it and the stars would fade after a while but it would take the edge off the evening if someone did it every three minutes for half an hour.
Not trying to make this into anything it isn't, but it's mildly annoying, and interesting to talk about the reasons it happens.
Daniel
dhutch said:
I've drive a van and stopped at temporary lights cheers, it's fine obviously certianly doesnt hurt but also not ideal. Often also temporary!
Have you ever pulled up 6ft off the back of a set of lane closure vehicles, in the dark, four abreast, for a minute and a half, without thinking 'thats a but bright in my face' after a long day at work, five days in seven? I mean just because something is managable, or doesn't hurt doesn't mean it's idea. If someone wanged a high power torch in your face as a laugh, you would get over it and the stars would fade after a while but it would take the edge off the evening if someone did it every three minutes for half an hour.
Not trying to make this into anything it isn't, but it's mildly annoying, and interesting to talk about the reasons it happens.
Daniel
Yup, that's fair. I can agree to "mildly annoying". The worst is slow moving nose-to-tail traffic shuffling along at stop-start walking pace. You can't stop concentrating because you have to keep shuffling along, stopping and shuffling some more. And hardly anyone wants to use their handbrakes because you're never stopped for long enough.Have you ever pulled up 6ft off the back of a set of lane closure vehicles, in the dark, four abreast, for a minute and a half, without thinking 'thats a but bright in my face' after a long day at work, five days in seven? I mean just because something is managable, or doesn't hurt doesn't mean it's idea. If someone wanged a high power torch in your face as a laugh, you would get over it and the stars would fade after a while but it would take the edge off the evening if someone did it every three minutes for half an hour.
Not trying to make this into anything it isn't, but it's mildly annoying, and interesting to talk about the reasons it happens.
Daniel
But here's the funny thing. If you get annoyed by something you tend to notice it more often than someone who is more laid back. It's called confirmation bias. If you have a "thing" about brake lights or middle lane hogs or bright headlights or whatever you will focus on them more. You'll spend more time looking at them. And that gets us into a vicious circle where a mild annoyance becomes a pet peeve becomes a real hate. The primitive parts of our brains pump out adrenaline and we're into fight or flight mode.
And that's when we get threads like this one. Someone gets really wound up about something that annoys them, but large numbers of us manage to cope with. It's human nature. Rewind time and no doubt our some of ancestors were complaining that mammoth steaks were annoying because those black hairs get caught in your teeth.
Inigo Montoya said:
Yup, that's fair. I can agree to "mildly annoying". The worst is slow moving nose-to-tail traffic shuffling along at stop-start walking pace. You can't stop concentrating because you have to keep shuffling along, stopping and shuffling some more. And hardly anyone wants to use their handbrakes because you're never stopped for long enough.
But here's the funny thing. If you get annoyed by something you tend to notice it more often than someone who is more laid back. It's called confirmation bias. If you have a "thing" about brake lights or middle lane hogs or bright headlights or whatever you will focus on them more. You'll spend more time looking at them. And that gets us into a vicious circle where a mild annoyance becomes a pet peeve becomes a real hate. The primitive parts of our brains pump out adrenaline and we're into fight or flight mode.
And that's when we get threads like this one. Someone gets really wound up about something that annoys them, but large numbers of us manage to cope with. It's human nature. Rewind time and no doubt our some of ancestors were complaining that mammoth steaks were annoying because those black hairs get caught in your teeth.
Absolutely, all of that!But here's the funny thing. If you get annoyed by something you tend to notice it more often than someone who is more laid back. It's called confirmation bias. If you have a "thing" about brake lights or middle lane hogs or bright headlights or whatever you will focus on them more. You'll spend more time looking at them. And that gets us into a vicious circle where a mild annoyance becomes a pet peeve becomes a real hate. The primitive parts of our brains pump out adrenaline and we're into fight or flight mode.
And that's when we get threads like this one. Someone gets really wound up about something that annoys them, but large numbers of us manage to cope with. It's human nature. Rewind time and no doubt our some of ancestors were complaining that mammoth steaks were annoying because those black hairs get caught in your teeth.
I started noticing it when i was routinely coming in to Liverpool last winter, forgot all about it over summer, and then now I am living here commuting daily its come back all over again. However, while the snap of a police car joining it tickled me it doesn't bother me enough to start a start, just enough to get me reading it a taking part one evening.
At least as its traffic lights there isnt much crawling stop-start its just each lights. So you can half look away till you get some amber in the mixed, handbrake off and your away.
Unless it the steep bit out of the tunnel by chapel street, in which case I am on the foot brake game myself, because bmw handbrakes!
Daniel
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