A recent incident whilst driving on the motorway got me thinking about the current design of car brake lights. Most cars work in the same way i.e. you push the brake pedal and the brake lights come on. It doesn’t matter what speed your doing or how much pressure you put on the brake pedal it’s still the same illuminated warning.
If you are driving at speed and the car in front brakes heavily the only indicator (apart from the brake lights) is that car getting closer to you much quicker. When the car in front brakes lightly there is less of a problem but as mentioned earlier there is only one type of illuminated warning. Obviously keeping a safe distance should allow you enough time to brake safely but the reality is that people don’t drive within the safe stopping zone. I think a slight tweak to current brake lights could help warn people of heavy braking:

I watched David McCandless sparring with Neville Brody on Newsnight a couple of weeks ago and followed it up by watching a good talk on The beauty of data visualization by David McCandless:
I was so inspired by the TED talk that I put together my own visual interpretation of my technical and design skills. I’ll let you tell me if I’ve been successful or not.
I’m surrounded by user interface design. From the moment I wake up I’m faced with some simple and some more complex interface designs that somehow I manage to work out. Someone, somewhere has thought about these designs and it’s been their sole purpose to make the experience easy to understand, easy to do and easy to remember.