Advantage of Multi-Color Taillights?

If our roads were to the same standards are German roads we would save tons of money. The reason is that we would not have to reconstruct our roads as often as we do now. That means that those major traffic jams caused by construction would occur less often. Traffic jams are a major waste of money.

-------------- Alex

Yellow rear turn signals have been allowed in the US since the 1970s, if not earlier. Some very common cars and trucks sold in the US have them. So old folks should have seen plenty of them. Of course, if no one in your area ever uses turn signals, you may not have noticed.

Yeah, and perhaps bulbs used only for turn signals will take longer to burn out than bulbs also used for other purposes. (The alternative, which is that drivers back up to a reflective store window or walk around the car or something and *check* their lights once in a while, seems like far too much to ask.)

Well, that's really just the other side of the coin of ambiguity, isn't it? (With amber turn signals you know immediately what a flash of red must mean.)

--Joe "Alas, either kind of directional only works if the driver uses 'em" Chew

DS

Aren't the brake lamps separate from the running lamps in Europe as well? So essentially makes four (or maybe 5) separate housings and bulbs on each side:

1. Clear backup 2. Amber signals 3. Red (bright) brake 4. Red (dimmer) runners 5. Red (bright) fogs

There's nothing like deciding the outcome in advance of the facts.

Not mandatorily, no. Combination brake/tail lamps are just as legal in Europe as they are in North America.

Your list above results in eleven separate compartments on the rear of the car, counting the center brake lamp. Under current European regulations, the minimum total number of compartments, again counting the center brake lamp, is seven. (one center brake, one white backup, one red fog, two red brake/tail, and two amber turn).

Under current US regulations, the minimum total number of compartments, counting the center brake lamp, is four (one center brake, one white backup, two red brake/tail/turn).

The least-costly means of implementing amber rear turn signals calls for five compartments (one center brake, two red brake/tail, two amber backup/turn). This setup, minus the center brake, was common in Australia for several decades and was used in Europe on some vehicles until the backup lamp function was made mandatorily white in the late '70s (Europe) mid '80s (Australia). I have my pickup truck set up this way. Works great...I have amber rear directionals and red brake/tails, without any added lighting devices, rear visibility when in Reverse is perfectly adequate, and just judging by other drivers' reactions when parallel parking in busy city traffic, day or night, nobody has any problem interpreting "left amber burning steadily, right amber flashing" as a vehicle that is reversing and moving rightward.

DS

Interesting. Just the other day I saw a first generation Dodge Neon where the red tail lights worked as brake lights and amber turn signals came out of what is normally the reverse light segment. I did not get to see what happened in reverse.

Is this setup legal in North America?

Federally, no.

This was apparently a fairly common way of implementing amber turn signals for "export" models of Studebakers in the 1962-66 time period. Thus, amber backup light lenses often turn up at swap meets, to the confusion of those who did not know about this.

Personally, I'm not nuts about the setup as I would think that the amber backup lights would reduce visibility to the rear after dark; but then again, amber turn signals would be nice too.

nate

(discussion totally academic as my current ride is a '55 coupe, which has no backup lights at all, and I don't feel like tracking down the expensive and rare factory units which happen to be ugly as sin and ruin the lines of the trunk lid.)

While that is true, it is not as desirable as yellow rear turn signals from the point of using color to make lights less ambiguous, and combined brake / turn lamps also allow a single bulb failure to eliminate more lighting functions at one time.

In addition, some drivers will hit the hazard lamps upon reaching a sudden slowdown, to alert following drivers that something other than "normal" (i.e. gentle) braking is being done. With yellow rear turn signals, the hazard lamps are quite obvious and do not mask the brake lamps. With separate red rear turn signals, the hazard lamps may be lost as you state above. With combined brake / turn lamps, the hazard lamps will mask the brake lamps, especially if the third brake lamp is burned out or not present on an older car.

What do Neons sold in Europe have for rear lamps? For cars like the Neon and Focus that are also sold in Europe in the same body style but have red rear turn signals in North America, would rear lamps from the European models be drop in replacements that are legal in North America?

You miss the point.

If the amber light is there, but is not on during brake lamp testing and is never seen as amber when off and yet it STILL seems to influence the study, then there is either a flaw or a coincidence.

Now, if the study is limited to measuring the brake lamp reaction times whenever the turn signals are ALSO on, then the point doesn't stand because the signal lamps WILL be seen as amber in that case.

True, but you are also trading one ambiguity for another. With the exception of amber rear turn signals, "Red means Rear." Granted, that's probably an easier to resolve ambiguity... but when I approach a car pulled to the side of the road at night with its headlamps off, hazard signals flashing and they're amber, I can't tell if its pointing toward me and might zip at me to make a U-turn or not. Like I said, less likely to occur, but still an ambiguity.

and combined

Except that a large percentage of those installations had multiple bulbs (all functioning identically) on each side of the car.

But "flashing both red" also means "pumping brakes" which means "EMERGENCY STOP." I don't see that as an ambiguity at all.. In fact, flashing ambers WITH brake lights are more confusing initially.

That's part of the problem with the way today's red rear turnsignals are implemented in the US. There is still a separate turn signal lamp, and its area in the lamp bucket just has a red lens instead of amber so that you have 'duelling red' signals (brake and turn) instead of the brake lamp beginning to flash when the signal comes on. The two reds can mask each other, whereas there is no masking if the brake lamp on that side goes OFF when the turn signal blinks off as it did back in the days when red rear turn signals were the norm. But that requires routing the brake lamp wires through the turn signal switch, a more complicated turn signal switch, etc. and so its no longer done.

Amber rear turn signals are legal here, so its purely a matter of styling to use red rear turnsignals anyway.

I cannot answer for those cars, but for (96-98) mustangs the export taillamps were a mechanical drop in but required some creative re-wiring of the harness so things worked as they should. I didn't learn about their existance until after they had become rare and expensive.

By now most of us are conditioned to interpret two (or three) steady bright red lights as a indicating the car ahead is slowing while a single flashing light means the car may be turning and dual flashing lights means the car is either stopped or is having some sort of problem. I can see where there may be some added benefit to having amber colored turns. But the number of lights lit and their action are the way we interpret the intentions of the next driver.

Assuming it is at night, when you cannot tell which end of the car is which, the car with the hazard lamps only is much less likely to move than one with the headlamps and taillamps on. Unless the driver is stupid (or intoxicated) enough to not turn on the lights (in which case s/he is a hazard no matter what lights are on or not), and/or there are enough burned out bulbs on the car, the situation you mention is unlikely to be a disadvantage of yellow rear turn signals.

Some, not all. Of course, some such multiple combined red bulbs have dual filament bulbs which go on and off and blink in strange patterns when some filaments but not others fail.

Most people don't pump brakes to make a quick stop, since pumping typically lengthens stopping distances. While pumping may be used by some drivers when on wet or slippery surfaces, that reason goes away with antilock brake systems.

No, Steve, he's right: You cannot say one way or the other whether the effect will exist to the same degree, to a higher or lower degree, or not at all when the amber signal is not lit or is concealed, without actually doing the research. There are way too many factors at work to guess which one beats out all the others.

Not necessarily. I'll grant you that there should logically be no difference in reaction time to a vehicle's brake lamps with red or amber rear turn signals *if* the following driver has never ever seen that particular car before and has no way of discerning the turn signal color without seeing the turn signal in use. But, priming could well be happening if the following driver sees the turn signals in operation even just once, even just briefly, and could even be happening if the driver has seen the same _type_ of vehicle before. It's not likely that too many people consciously access a mental database of vehicles and figure out what color light the rear turn signals produce on whatever car they're following, but it is possible that such details are remembered to some degree, probably a highly variable degree, on a subconscious level.

DS