Originally Posted By: Nick1994
People's lights hardly work now as it is, we don't need anything complicated. Seems like 1/3 of the cars out on the road either have a burned out headlight or brake light. Sometimes both brake lights, even cars only a couple years old! Older cars seem to have bulbs that last forever.
This is true.
Down here in the land of NO state inspections of any kind, burnt out bulbs are common. The police don't seem to care unless the bad light gives them a means to pull over a car that has gotten their interest in some other way. Lots of cars down here have nothing but a partially working high mount brake light.
I think some sort of "active" brake light system could have benefits, but I would also wonder about how much cost/complexity it would add (maybe not much, but OEMs can find a way to make it complicated), or if some sort of undesireable driving behavior might result with the absent minded/"I drive how I want to" crowd.
The biggest issue with the electrical systems in modern cars burning through bulbs is that now a lot of bulbs are so buried in the car that it takes pulling back the bumper cover or some other ridiculous procedure to change them. In those situations, I'd be worried about an active brake lamp system being harder on the bulbs. Lots of cars are going to LED, but those go bad sometimes too. I see a fair number of malfunctioning LED lights, or ones where only a few of the diodes are working.