So I just realized something.

"Rainbow" (rainbeaux) 11/04/2015 at 11:16 • Filed to: None

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Trucks don’t have third brake lights, and that’s a pretty big safety issue. Those sets of three red lights at the top are kind of like one, but they’re always illuminated. Every red light on the back of semis and box trucks is always lit up. Sure, they get brighter under braking, but that’s not enough; that’s the entire reason the third brake light exists. So... Maybe, just maybe, we’d have less deaths from this:

... if we just slapped another light on the back of every truck and made sure it lights up only under braking.

desertdog5051 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:26

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Maybe it’s a way to cull the bad/inattentive drivers from the herd. We could use fewer of those anyway.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:29

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...also, with the choice of hitting 2 trailers, swerve and hit the Manac.

Rico > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:30

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It’s funny I noticed this the other day, some of the tail lights on trucks are SUPER small and a truck was merging and had his signal on and you could barely tell! I’m surprised that these trucks which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars lack so many safety features that would make roads safer all around. No lane keeping, no blind spot tech, no back up camera (ever seen a truck destroy the hood of a car by going in reverse?), and tiny ass brake/turn signal lights. Hell the lights on an Escalade are more prominent.

The semi truck business just lacks regulation and oversight. You’ve got expensive ass trucks, no tech, absurd schedules and sleep deprived drivers. But don’t let your truck weigh more than it should at a weigh station or there will be hell to pay.

Cherry_man1 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:35

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The big question is: Does it matter anyway? The current ones are right in the line of sight for anyone right now and adding a 3rd one would cause the trailers to be higher and cause all sorts of clearance issues.

Urambo Tauro > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:35

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...they get brighter under braking, but that’s not enough; that’s the entire reason the third brake light exists.

It’s enough for me. The light output between running lights and brake/turn indicators is unmistakable. I’ve always had a hard time understanding the reason for the CHMSL. It’s redundant. There’s nothing to block your view of the other brake lamps (unless tailgating).

jariten1781 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:36

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You’ve got to be trying to rear end a truck...they don’t really stop on a dime ya know?

I've never had any issues with the brake light scheme.

Rainbow > jariten1781 11/04/2015 at 11:37

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They can actually stop really really quickly.

Rainbow > Urambo Tauro 11/04/2015 at 11:39

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Sometimes you don’t see the lights until the vehicle is braking already, though. If there’s a third brake light, you immediately know it’s stopping. If the lights are just brighter than usual, you have no way of knowing that until you’re able to notice that it’s slowing down, which may be too late.

Rainbow > Cherry_man1 11/04/2015 at 11:40

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How would it cause them to be higher? It could just go between the regular taillights.

Cherry_man1 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:43

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Like in the doors? Or above the doors? Below the Doors in the Frame?

jariten1781 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:43

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All the studies I’ve seen show 30% - 300% longer braking distances (depending how cooked their brakes are) for average commercial truck to average car. Never seen any real data that even shows them close to comparable.

crowmolly > Rico 11/04/2015 at 11:45

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The trucks are expensive, not really the trailers.

Hell, the truck could be owned by one company, the chassis another, and the box a third.

Urambo Tauro > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:46

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Isn’t it standard practice for brake lights to be activated by the brake pedal? I’ve never heard of brake lights responding to other methods of deceleration.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:47

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Great idea in theory, in practice - no. Any light toward the mid-line would have to be on one door or the other (or otherwise on a movable surface) and would be conked out 5 times in 10. Fixed light locations are possible to dummy-proof, but ones on doors or rollups or containers are not - the door and other elements are of a brutally physical design that doesn’t have a way to accommodate wiring, which means a cable swingin’ in the breeze, which means failure. All the way at the top is useless because it’s so far out of the line of sight when it would matter. The other option is for the third-light to be in the rear beam (still higher than some convertible’s 3bls) but that’s not quite dummy-proof either and doesn’t have the intuitive benefit of being higher than other lights.

Further, trucks are not paragons of braking, nor are they a majority of articles on the road in most situations. With a car, you future-proof the problems with modern cars’ modern braking systems and distribute a large number until the majority of items on the road have third lights, which functions very well on a cost/benefit of improving brake reaction. It’s like herd immunity. With the stopping distances of a truck, inattention-caused failure to recognize brakes leading to an accident is at a much higher order of inattention than that of a car. The typical truck simply won’t be closed on as quickly when braking as a car, so the extra half-second of recognition obtained is simply not as useful in most cases. Fewer trucks, longer braking.

In addition to this, the clearance lights and sheer size of the vehicle propose a significant hurdle. How, on a huge surface which the following driver could be focused on many different sub-areas of, which is already festooned with lights, do you make one more stand out. The answer would be to have a really, stupidly huge one. That makes all of the above even harder to get sorted out, and runs the risk of causing distraction... and if you cause even a fraction as many accidents actively as you think you’ve prevented passively, your ass is grass. Liability says no.

The only thing that I would concede is that a requirement for separate brake lights of greater intensity on new trailers is reasonable. A third brake light... too many issues.

Rainbow > Cherry_man1 11/04/2015 at 11:51

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Pretty much where the license plate goes. That can just be moved off-center.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 11:56

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Another small note is that many small commercial style trailers use a four-pin connector which doubles up on brake/signal light wiring. Without an electronic module to recognize a both-on situation, there’s no way to selectively light up a third light. Don’t get me wrong, that’s doable, (for like $10) but trailers *are* built to a price point and with efforts to failure-proof wiring, that would mean all-in probably an extra $150+ to the cost on the trailer -an extra 15’+ of wiring, fixture, installation, module, additional trailer machining/manufactory costs...

Rico > crowmolly 11/04/2015 at 11:59

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I figured the truck and chassis were one thing and the trailer for it being separate didn’t think the 3 were separate.

DrJohannVegas > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 12:04

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This is the definition of anecdata, and bad anecdata at that.

Cherry_man1 > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 12:17

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I don’t see a point of it. Because most trucks have reflectors on the rear as well

Moves-Like-Senna > Cherry_man1 11/04/2015 at 12:20

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Pretty much all trucks do as most states/provinces require tape to be in certain locations of the truck. My family farm puts them on the same locations of our trailers and even our pickups, oddly the number of times our trucks got rear-ended after adding the tape dropped to zero over the past 10 years vs a few times a year. The tape is rather magical.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Rico 11/04/2015 at 19:46

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some of them here in Oz aren’t that much better.

these are LEDs

pip bip - choose Corrour > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 19:46

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never knew Hyundai made trailers.

Rainbow > pip bip - choose Corrour 11/04/2015 at 20:10

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Really? They’re very common, as far as I’ve noticed.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Rainbow 11/04/2015 at 20:14

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well , they’re not sold here in Australia.

i’d never heard of them before , i knew Hyundai made light trucks.

had absolutely no idea they did trailers.

Rainbow > pip bip - choose Corrour 11/04/2015 at 20:19

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Ahhh, I forgot you lived there. Here in the US, they probably make up at least 1/5 of trailers. Probably a bit more.