EARLY WARNINGS
I'm a total believer in technology innovations and/or innovations that can make our driving experience better, no matter how prosaic. So this innovation reported by Engadget, that's still in the world of academia caught my eye:
"It's only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you're stopping, but if you're slowing down, when you're about to stop, and how quickly you're pressing the pedal.
The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights -- when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you're slamming on the brake, they'll all flash red.
The team, led by mechanical engineering Professor Mehdi Ahmadian, has plans for the system beyond the lab, though they speculate that it will be easier to add them as additional indicators on commercial vehicles at first. If this pans out, someday soon we may all be tailgating a totally psychedelic light show."
It'll be a while if something like this is available as a commercial product, but it's definitely something that could improve the rush-hour stop-and-go driving experience anywhere.
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