When I first read a thread with a kappa install of these, I thought, that's a great idea. A few years ago, I was travelling in a pack of vehicles towards evening rush hour traffic. Speed limit is about 80km/h or 50mph, eventually it opened up a bit, but then there was a pack of about 3-5 deept 3 lanes wide at a red light, just pulling away, and I had to come to a near dead stop, I had plenty of room, no big deal, slowed down gently. Then as we're just about to start accelerating from about 20km/h or about 13mph I notice a mid 90's buick coming in REAL fast, and still isn't on the brakes yet. Moron suddenly realizes he's coming in HOT, like 90-95km/h or about 55mph, and slams on the brakes, I see his nose dive, and plumes of tire smoke. I pull into the left turn lane, that buys him a few more car lengths, and he just manages to not hit the guy that was in front of me, after he noticed and accelerated as much as he had space. I pull up to the guy and he's very apologetic, which I wish more of us were on the road, not for any other reason than it being unbelievably disarming. I wanted to repeatedly beat him in the face when it was happening, but his sincere apology left me just shaking my head.
At first I thought, yah, I need this as a result. But then again, would it have really made a difference? I mean at that point, I wasn't even on the brakes. Then I was on the highway the other day where a motorcyclist had it. And even in daytime, it was at first confusing, and then illicited a "cool" and then a realization that it is annoying. When it first happened, I wasn't sure he was even braking. And now I might think the same of other drivers simply because it seems this feature is SO rare, no one knows what it means. Even though I'm relatively aware of this feature, I wasn't 100% sure what it was at first. I mean, my instinct would be slow down just in case, but not get on the brakes now. So it may help attract attention, which may be a good thing with a distracted driver no doubt. But at the same time, one might be slightly confused, and react slower to it than a non-flashing one.
I'm curious as to whether there have been empirical tests on this.
