I guess I could’ve complained to one of the manufacturers, but what do they care? I’m not buying their cars.
The dealer explained that this is a "critical safety feature" that they install on all the vehicles they sell. He then explained that it makes the brake light flash whenever you press the brake pedal. I read about it for 10 minutes, and found there's a legitimate system in use in Europe that detects emergency braking and flashes the brake light. Since that system detects emergency braking and not just pressing the brake pedal, it doesn't go off all the time and actually means something to other drivers. The Pulse system is just a $30 part that's spliced into the wires right behind the brake light, that the dealer gets to charge $400 for it. And it annoys everyone driving behind you.
I live in a small town on an island with 14 miles of road. There were about five vehicles here five or ten years ago with this system, and they stood out because we all start to recognize each other's cars in an isolated town of 10,000. All of those cars are gone or have had the system removed. I told the dealer I'd look like an a***e to bring that system back to our town. He called back later to say I was lucky and they hadn't installed the system on this particular vehicle yet, and he got special permission to sell me one without Pulse. I told him I found a dealer that wasn't trying to upsell useless parts and hung up.
I've heard of people buying new without running into this kind of tactic. But this is the first time I've ever bought a new vehicle, and I ran into almost every issue I've read about when dealing with new car dealers.
Good god, slimy sales tactics asides that sounds like complete cargo-culting of the feature making it not just useless for its original purpose but actively misleading.
And I would expect the original feature grew at least in part from the common habit (I don't think it's ever required) of enabling the hazards when reaching an unforeseen obstruction: on many cars these days the hazards will automatically switch on during emergency braking (usually detected via an accelerometer, it tends to come on at the same time as brake assist though I don't think the two are coupled), it's possible that on some the brakes will also flash though I can't remember ever seeing that.
Of course many US cars have red turn signals / hazards, and US standards even allow brakes and turn signals to use the same lights, which is… not sane.
One particularly awful safety feature actually ramps up brake force assist when it "detects" emergency braking behavior; typically abrupt lift off of the throttle and subsequent application of the brake.
They never considered that maybe I WANT to abruptly lift off the throttle and then GENTLY apply the brakes, without having my head thrown towards the steering wheel.
FMVSS 108 still requires steady illumination of the stop lamps (including the center high mounted one). I found one article[1] staying that the NHTSA granted a temporary exception to that requirement for Mercedes in 2006. Was that exemption expanded and is it still in effect?
"Pulse is the only pulsing third brake light that meets regulatory requirements for use in all 50 states. Step on the brake pedal and Pulse goes to work pulsing, rather than flashing, the third brake light. What’s the difference? NHTSA regulations restrict flashing lights to emergency vehicles. Our award winning rear-end collision deterrent technology causes the third brake light to remain steady burning, even while the light pulses."
At a 500% markup, it feels less about your safety and more about the dealerships/pulseprotects income safety.
1. (warning xls) https://www.pulseprotects.com/wp-content/uploads/Pulse-Prote...
The profit calculation is based on preinstalling the system on every vehicle that goes on the lot, and then uninstalling it on request. This means opting out costs the dealership real money, from installing and then uninstalling it.
And at least in my Auris it also flashed the hazard light indicator inside the car
I've never seen or heard of this.
But seeing cars that flash their brake light under heavy/emergency braking is common (typically high-end European brands)
I've done it myself when going from regular speed to unexpected traffic, in the hope that the person behind me is paying attention...
I'm not fundamentally opposed - systems that do it automatically sound like a fantastic compromise. I just think if it's dangerous enough that I feel other drivers need more warning than normal, it's probably dangerous enough that I should have full control.
Then, switch on the hazards so the driver behind you gets a heads up. Obviously you don’t risk crashing fumbling for the hazards.
Particularly useful on rural roads with many turns where the slowdown really might be surprising, or on off ramps where the car behind you might not have arrived yet.
It's basically a heads up for all the vehicles far behind you that haven't yet noticed a sudden change in the flow of the traffic. Gives them more time to reduce speed without haste.
Trying to encode extra info into the brake lights is a fools errand.
> I've never seen or heard of this.
If you're being annoyingly tailgated, rapidly tap your brakes a couple times to signal the tailgater that you have brakes -- if you need to use them for real, he'll crash into you, so he should back off.
Used to be standard communication in Northern Europe, i.e Germany up through the Nordics, but may have fallen somewhat out of the public consciousness recently (Geroffmylawn, damn millennials, etc).
Instead of blinking the brake lights, some U.S. cars automatically turn on the hazard lights under heavy braking. It's standard on mine.
Under hard braking on European/Japanese cars the hazard lights will automatically come on. Because they're overloaded in the US it's hard to tell if it's that, or the brake lights flashing unless you're paying close attention to the middle brake light.
Edit: Just seen the comment about the Pulse system - didn't know about that!
Better hope it's not burnt out, like I see all too often in North America
That's new to me as EU driver. What I tend to do is hit brakes three or more times in a rhythmic fashion to signal there's traffic jam ahead; specifically on Autobahn where speeds go high with distances often way too low, instead of turning on alarm blinkers.
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[§]: Well, pedal.
Yeah, but I don't want to drive extra slow, do I? For one thing, I want to proceed as fast as possible, to get where I'm going. For another, if I slow down, the gap in front of me will widen enough that some fucker -- quite possibly the one now tailgating me -- will squeeze into it, and then I am the one tailgating someone.
> or breaking once I guess.
Quite the Freudian typo... Yes, braking for real while being tailgated is rather likely to lead to things breaking. And since one of those things is me (and another my car), I'd prefer not to.