Will flashier brake lights reduce accidents?

Roland Jones Business news editor • Profile • E-mail

Ever since Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot crashed his “fardier à vapeur,” or “steam wagon,” into a wall in the late eighteenth century, inadvertently creating the first recorded automobile accident, safety has been paramount for vehicle makers.

Carmakers have developed everything from antilock brakes to airbags in an effort to make driving safer and reduce the harmful effects of road accidents. And now Mercedes-Benz USA wants to take road safety one step further.

In January, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration awarded the U.S. subsidiary of the German luxury car company a temporary exemption from U.S. automobile safety standards, allowing it to sell as many as 5,000 vehicles over the next two years that include brake lights that flash during emergency stops.

The NHTSA had originally refused to make a permanent change to its auto safety rule, which requires the steady illumination of vehicle lights, but relented when Mercedes said it wanted to show its flashing brake lights improve car safety by preventing rear-end crashes. Dubbed Adaptive Brake Lights, these brakes lights are only activated when the brake pedal is pushed heavily for a hard stop. The feature is already available in Europe in Mercedes S-class and CL-class cars.

“This is a classic case of lighting engineering moving faster than federal standards,” said Rae Tyson, a spokesperson for the NHTSA.

“We are seeing lot of new lighting innovations; some of them are allowed and some not,” Tyson added. “My understanding is [Mercedes] made a good case of allowing these brake lights to be used on a trial basis. Presumably they argued that flashing lights are just as visible, or perhaps more visible than regular lights. Whether they really are better remains to be seen, but we have faith in Mercedes engineering.”

Tyson points to a 1986 NHTSA law change that mandated that all new passenger cars include a center high mounted stop lamp, or “CHMSL” — a third stop lamp, or brake light, mounted on the rear of a vehicle. “We saw a safety benefit — a decline in crashes,” he said. “Anything you can do to raise visibility of a vehicle is good.”

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