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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 1, 2017, 9:41 pm 
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Joined: December 17, 2010, 1:24 pm
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Location: Gainesville, Mo.
RichardSIA wrote:
He had spring steel behind his fender panels so... they sprang back into shape.


Pretty common in dirt tracking. My '67 LeMans had early Camaro mono-leafs inside the rear fenders!


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 2, 2017, 11:50 am 
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Joined: March 30, 2011, 7:18 am
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Location: central Arkansas
horizenjob wrote:
Our cars are more prone to this because of how low and small they are.


I'm not so sure. I rode shotgun on a friend's wrecker sometimes.

He pulled what I considered to be a completely disproportionate number of marked police cars, fire trucks, and school buses (which have strobe lights on on the back bumper here!) over the years. The drivers *always* said "but I didn't see it!", like it was some kind of get-out-of-jail-free mantra.

The street rod guys have the opposite problem; gawkers who are so intent on staring that they cross over into their lane, herding them off onto the shoulder or ditch.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 2, 2017, 11:52 am 
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Joined: March 30, 2011, 7:18 am
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Location: central Arkansas
ngpmike wrote:
I've seen some motorcycles around with an LED brake light. When activated, this rather bright light strobes 3 or 4 times before going to "steady ON".


Against the law in my state, and rightfully so. They're incredibly annoying. The oblivious cagers are a hazard; making them angry isn't going to help things.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 8, 2017, 5:17 pm 
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Joined: November 26, 2012, 2:29 pm
Posts: 191
Location: Rome, GA
TRX wrote:
ngpmike wrote:
I've seen some motorcycles around with an LED brake light. When activated, this rather bright light strobes 3 or 4 times before going to "steady ON".


Against the law in my state, and rightfully so. They're incredibly annoying. The oblivious cagers are a hazard; making them angry isn't going to help things.

I've been thinking of setting up a secondary brake light switch that would make the brakes only flash once the pedal is pressed hard.

Wouldn't help against normal traffic but if you really need to brake it would flash and alert drivers behind you.

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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 8, 2017, 5:24 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
Posts: 1994
Location: Novato, CA
I manually flash my brake lights whenever it might not be obvious to the person behind me why I'm stopping.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 8, 2017, 5:54 pm 
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Joined: March 3, 2006, 10:48 pm
Posts: 1590
Location: Shawnee, Ks
I have the "Back Off" brand third brake light flasher on my car. The third brake light is mounted on my roll bar. Works great. Russ

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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 8, 2017, 6:05 pm 
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Joined: December 24, 2007, 5:11 am
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Location: Seattle area
Just installed. Thought that I might need it someday.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 11, 2017, 5:42 pm 
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Location: central Arkansas
CodySimonson wrote:
I've been thinking of setting up a secondary brake light switch that would make the brakes only flash once the pedal is pressed hard.


In my experience the flashers do no good against the kind of drivers you're trying to alert. They're on their phone texting or watching videos, drunk, stoned, playing with the radio, or rummaging around on the floorboard like the woman who rear-ended my wife at 45mph a couple of years ago.

A friend pulled a lot of marked police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and school buses that were hit by people who "didn't see" them, even when some of them had both lights and sirens going.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 12, 2017, 5:15 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
Posts: 1994
Location: Novato, CA
There is no solution that's guaranteed to work every tome, but incremental improvements help your odds, I think.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 14, 2017, 5:25 pm 
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Joined: October 24, 2008, 2:13 pm
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Location: Carlsbad, California, USA
I do remember a trial of taxis in San Francisco 25-30 years ago where they had the warning light in the middle of the rear window like we have now, but it flashed quicker as more brake pressure was applied. I seem to remember they felt they were more effective than the ones that just light up with a constant brightness as we have in production cars now. I don't know why they were never brought into the Federal rules or production. Does anyone know why?

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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 14, 2017, 5:52 pm 
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Joined: November 11, 2013, 4:47 am
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"Dizzy" Liz Dole left office!
I despise the Third Eye brake-light.
Too often blinding which is NOT good for following drivers night vision.

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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 14, 2017, 8:32 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
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Location: Novato, CA
I think it was Joan Claybrook more than Elizabeth Dole. No one ever proved it was more effective, but they did come up with some clever statistics.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 14, 2017, 10:47 pm 
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Joined: June 8, 2010, 8:02 pm
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Location: White Rock, BC, Canada
Traditionally there are strict regs as to how fast and how bright automotive bulbs can light up. That's probably what killed the variable brightness brake lamp. That, or a patent-troll (like so many other things).

Cheers.

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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 15, 2017, 1:44 pm 
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nick47 wrote:
No one ever proved it was more effective, but they did come up with some clever statistics.


The "research" consisted of adding parcel-shelf brake lights to fifteen marked Metro DC police cars. Over the course of the trial, which was less than a year, they still got rear-ended a couple of times. The "numbers", apparently pulled out of thin air since no control group was ever mentioned, said that it reduced incidents of rear-end collisions by 75%.

Now, figure out what kind of driver it will take to rear-end a marked police car in the first place...

As far as I know no real testing was ever done. It was just such an obviously great idea they signed it into law.

I wrote a number of letters back when word hit the magazines, and eventually got a "we don't care what you think" form letter.


Back when I used to meet up with guys from sportbikes.net for group rides, there would always be one or two bozos who showed up with those idiot taillight flashers. They always got sour when they had to ride at the back of the pack, behind the slowest bikes. And we turned away a few with the "headlight pulsers" because nobody wanted to have them flashing in their mirrors all day.


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 Post subject: Re: Rear ended
PostPosted: December 15, 2017, 2:48 pm 
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Joined: April 23, 2006, 8:26 pm
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Location: SoCal
The setup I currently see on ambulances is where when they hit the brakes, the brake lights blink really fast for about half a second, then stay on. I liked it so much I have the same setup.

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