Braking Bar: A safer car for everyone
“You Shouldn’t Have to Buy a New Car to Have a Safe Car”
Such thinking motivated inventor and Stanford graduate Roland Hence to create Braking Bar — a product that any driver can stick to their car’s back window to get the same type of safety that new cars have.
Braking Bar is an Adaptive Brake Light, a recent innovation in brake lighting that gets drivers’ attentions faster under urgent braking — when it matters most. Normally when you brake, your brake lights illuminate normally, but in cases where you brake forcefully, Braking Bar adapts by either illuminating very brightly or by flashing. Extensive studies show that this technology can cause following vehicles to stop up to 19ft shorter, and thus reduce collision speeds by up to 22 mph.
The purpose of Braking Bar, and its company FrontLane, surpasses safety, however, “It’s about maximizing the effectiveness of the technology we already have.” As Roland goes on to say, “We often think of ‘powerful technology’ as something that is expensive and exclusively available. Our goal is to change that.”
Such sentiments of exclusivity are particularly poignant in the auto industry — the American public spends billions researching vehicle collisions and the latest safety. While this research has led to many great discoveries, these new discoveries have, for the most part, only benefited new vehicles. By making these new discoveries available to all, Roland and FrontLane hope to revolutionize the relationship between used cars and new technology.
Yet, it takes more than a positive — even revolutionary — message to make a product effective, which is why Braking Bar is based on extensive research and practice by the National Highway Traffic Administration, the United Nations, and major car manufacturers. The result is a product that is smart — it fully utilizes the studies on which it is based, even more so than some manufacturers’ Adaptive Brake Lights have in recent years.
Braking Bar is a combination of implausible combinations; people normally don’t associate powerful safety with user-installable, high-end with widely available, or Made in USA with affordable. Thus, this product falls into a greatly appealing space — powerful technology that’s easily accessible.
“Safety is important to everyone, so it should be available to everyone. Braking Bar is about taking something we know works for some, and making it work for all.”
Braking Bar is set to debut on Kickstarter in early 2016. For more information, check out the Facebook Page or visit BrakingBar.com.
