The Case for a Front-Facing Green Brake Light: What a 200-Crash Replay Reveals
If you’ve ever hesitated at an intersection, unsure whether that approaching car is actually slowing, you’ve felt the information gap this idea tries to close: a front-facing brake light, glowing green when the driver is braking. What the new research shows Researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), working with traffic-psychology experts, reconstructed 200 real intersection crashes and re-ran them with a hypothetical front brake light (FBL). The results are eye-opening: 7.5% to 17% of collisions could have been prevented, and in up to a quarter of cases, remaining crashes would have occurred at lower impact speeds—meaning less severe injuries. The peer-reviewed paper appears in Vehicles.  Why green? Multiple color options were tested conceptually, but green performed best for visual salience and psychological clarity—it’s rarely used on vehicles for other light functions and is already associated with “proceed/clear” in traffic signaling, which helps drivers parse int...