A Stepped Taillight
A concept for more information on the road-way when braking
The taillight - They’re 1,000s different styles. Some are tall, some are short, some are ugly and some are stylish. At their core it’s all basically the same regardless of how awesome the form factor is. Some have a turn signal, some have a reverse light they all have redlights. A simple off and on.
Taillight: A red light at the rear of a motor vehicle, train, or bicycle.
A Quest for More
Instead of a basic on off, I’ve proposed a solution that actually gives you information on what the vehicles infront and around you are doing. In some of my near bumper taps the problem has been that a long line of cars are coming to a stop rapidly and if you happen to glance away for a split second, it’s hard to understand exactly how hard some one is braking and what appropriate action you should take. (yes, there is the ever present car lurching forward but, that isn’t always 100% easy to discern)
The Stepped Approach
With the invention of LED bulbs and taillights, challenging the typical taillight design / pattern is more possible than it ever could be. The proposed solution, has multiple steps that allow you to know if the car is applying light, moderate or heavy brake pressure. To me, this answers the question of exactly how hard the driver infront of you is braking and allowing you to take action accordingly.
The Stepped Approach — Blink
Another solution could be adding a blink to the end of the tailight under extreme braking. This would handle those edge cases of a car trying to come to an abrupt stop and the person following would be able to interpret it accordingly. The color of the light could be from yellow to orange to red — accentuating the pedal pressure of it’s driver, it could progressively turn on more LED bulbs to show that the pedal is being depressed or it could simply climb from the bottom to the top of the taillight like above.
**Disclaimer there is a ton of edge cases and scenarios that these do not answer. Manufacturing, costs etc. There’s a good amount of driver re-education that would have to be involved with this as well as well as possibly changing laws that have to do with taillights and their functions. These is meerly a concept not a fully-baked shippable product**
Audi — Innovation at Work
Laser Taillight
Audi has already begun to push the bar with taillights with several concepts one being the laser taillights. This version is designed for fog showing the trailing driver that they should maintain a safe distance (marked by the red laser line). This is a great solution for re-educating drivers, especially under horrible road conditions like heavy fog.
Swarm Taillight
Another version that Audi recently debuted at CES Las Vegas is called Swarm. This one is an amazing OLED display. The general idea is to show drivers more information about what the car is doing infront of them.
When the driver turns, the red lights respond by ‘flowing’ in the direction of travel, and when the car slows they gather together in pools.
This is a great step in the right direction but, I feel as though this version would need tremendous driver education for it to take off.
BMW — OLED Technology
BMW has also been innovating with taillights and OLEDs which is definitely pushing the boundaries on how far stepped taillights can go.
Organic LED (OLED): This is the new cutting edge in lighting. OLEDs are made from organic semiconductor material and allow the designers much more freedom in their designs. Compared to the inorganic material already used in LEDs in standard production vehicles, the application of OLEDS in BMW Organic Light promises a range of benefits. Because of the design as a thin-layered element, for example, it is possible to produce very thin, flexible displays for smartphones or even lighting units for motor vehicles. http://www.f30post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=969902
Smart Taillight Concept
An Android device is receiving vehicle data over Bluetooth from an OpenXC Vehicle Interface plugged into the vehicle’s ODB port. The Android device is then using this data to display images to PIXEL: brake events, hard brake events, and multi-color bars proportional to the gas accelerator position. Also using voice commands from the Android device, various messages are sent to PIXEL. http://ledpixelart.com/portfolio-item/smart-brake-light-prototype-2/
