Fwd: How front brake lights could reduce pedestrian deaths
Bruce Geffen
From: Phoebe Wall Howard <phoebewa...@substack.com>
Date: Mon, May 11, 2026 at 7:04 AM
Subject: How front brake lights could reduce pedestrian deaths
To: <gef...@gmail.com>
How front brake lights could reduce pedestrian deathsSafety data impacts your insurance rates
The invention seems like a no brainer. It’s cheap and easy and, in theory, offers a very real solution to the problem of pedestrian death and injury. “It’s about saving lives and it’s so stupidly simple,” said Paul Schaye of Southampton, New York, a career private equity investor at Chestnut Hill Partners who conceived the ITellMotion device after getting hit by a car on his bicycle a decade ago. If you think this tech isn’t about you, think again. Anytime you can cut death and injury costs passed along to insurance companies, everyone wins. We’re talking about an enhanced front brake light inside the windshield, attached with a silicone strip, that shares with pedestrians, cyclists and oncoming traffic information conveyed by the back brake light. Schaye and his team have a second meeting scheduled with Jonathan Morrison, chief administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), to discuss the device this week. He leads the federal agency that establishes and enforces vehicle safety standards. Every 74 minutesFront brake light safety technology isn’t trivial. Imagine the ability to clearly see whether the car ahead is slowing or going, which would indicate the vehicle’s intention. In the U.S., 7,080 pedestrians died and 71,000 were injured in 2024, according to NHTSA. A pedestrian hit by a motor vehicle was killed every 74 minutes that year. Brake lights aren’t a new concept. In the early 1900s, they were viewed as a luxury. By the 1920s, states were making standard brake lights mandatory and the policy later was adopted by the federal government. In the 1970s, federal studies indicated that a center brake light (called a center high stop lamp) reduced rear-end collisions. It became mandated by NHTSA under President Ronald Reagan in 1985 for 1986 model year passenger cars. (Transport Canada adopted a mandate he same year.) This front brake light may be a logical next step.
The goal: Identify and fund a commercial partner to test prototypes of the strip in a fleet run by a municipality or private company. Only 50 vehicles are needed for 30 to 60 days, Schaye said. “We want to capture aggressive braking data of vehicles with and without the brake light. It’ll show pedestrians are stepping in front of the vehicle without our light. And with our light, a car coming to a four-way stop will not do aggressive braking at intersections or merging onto the highway,” he said.
Insurance ratesIdeally, the tech would produce data that could directly impact consumer insurance rates and be used as a selling point for major automakers. “Pedestrians cannot determine acceleration or deceleration of a car. They are right only about 38% of the time. With our device, it’s about 86% of the time,” Schaye said. “We’ve done extensive testing at the Virginia Technology Transportation Institute” (VTTI).
Andy Schaudt, director of life sciences at Rimkus global engineering and consulting based in Houston, Texas, said research consistently shows that pedestrians have a hard time determining whether a vehicle is accelerating or decelerating. “That’s kind of scary. When you flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of guessing correctly. People perform worse in these situations. Humans are not good at understanding what the vehicle is doing in terms of change in speed,” said Schaudt, a former data and analytics director at VTTI. Europe researching front brake tech, tooEurope has been testing a front light to signal braking to pedestrians. A study published in 2025 by researchers in Slovakia and Germany determined that front brake lights located below the license plate enhanced pedestrian safety. Their research indicated an 82% improvement in pedestrian safety with the use of front brake lights. This U.S. tech, which provides information on both acceleration and deceleration, has a white light if the vehicle is going and an amber light if the vehicle is slowing. Loren A. Smith Jr., the deputy assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, spoke to Shifting Gears as a pedestrian safety consultant prior to his government role. “We need a comprehensive approach to improving roadway safety,” he said. “ITellMotion is sort of a greenfield area where there hasn’t been a lot of research or effort.” Speed killsIn the U.S., pedestrian fatalities climb every single year. Contributing factors include distracted driving and size of vehicles. It’s especially hard to detect speeds in the 25 to 50 miles per hour range, said professor Sheila “Charlie” Klauer, a research scientist who studies driver risk mitigation as leader of the Applied Driver Assessment Performance & Training Group in the Division of Vehicle, Driver & System Safety at VTTI. “Brake lights are in the back but pedestrians are in the front. Is there a way to help pedestrians understand vehicle intent so they can make better crossing decisions?” she said. “I’m an independent researcher. I had nothing to do with the design or even the idea. That all came from ITellMotion … They’ve gone through a really thoughtful and smart way of designing a smart system to really make a difference."
When studying human factors engineering, it seems that people prefer looking at the windshield toward the driver’s face and not with the headlights or chrome area, she said. Data is essential for NHTSA to consider moving forward with mandating any devices, no matter how intuitive it may be. But Schaye believes the first Vehicle Front Alert System (VFAS) could be a compelling case. Companies curious about safety techPrivate sector employers are curious to learn more, Susan Hipp, former executive director of the non-profit Network of Employers for Traffic Safety, told me. While the non-profit organization doesn’t test technology, the group — which includes UPS, State Farm Insurance and Johnson & Johnson — appreciated seeing a presentation from Schaye, she said. “They’re always interested in making things safer,” said Hipp, who died in January after a long cancer fight. “Sometimes fleets are the best way to test tech and get it out there and get it used.” It would take little cognitive translation to incorporate front brake light technology, said Jane Lappin, an advisory board member in support of the Carnegie Mellon University-University of Pennsylvania, Transportation Research Center.
“For many of us, it would be such an instant recognition. And it’s not a terribly expensive addition to the vehicle,” said Lappin, who helped guide policy and research for six years as chair of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Automaker, Auto Zone optionsPedestrian and bicycle safety are priorities listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a group that works to reduce death and injury involving motor vehicles, also sees this issue as a priority. “I’d love to have an automaker say, ‘We want to put this in our vehicle,’” said Schaye, who hired Detroit lighting engineers to execute his vision for the company, Pedestrian Safety Solutions LLC., based in New York. Or maybe an automotive after-market lighting company would partner up to make the device and then sell it to a major retailer such as Auto Zone, he said. The company is seeking to get the front brake lights directly installed into cars by automakers themselves. However, it’s more likely to begin with after-market adoption. “In the period you’ve had dinner, a pedestrian has been killed,” Schaye said. “These aren’t accidents. These are preventable incidents.” All engineering for this technology is domestic. And the LED light in a flexible circuit, which uses the normal 12-volt car battery, is currently manufactured in Shelby Township, Michigan. More: Shoe choice won’t affect braking now How car headrest measures your brainwaves, warns of distress or distraction Wrong-way driver alert designed to prevent head-on crashes expands in U.S. To those who may be inspired: Buy Me a Coffee Shifting Gears is original reporting supported by readers like you. Sign up to become a free (or paid) subscriber. Learn cool things first. I’m honored to be part of The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative — sort of a Heartland version of the New York Times, featuring political analysis, features and news.
© 2026 Phoebe Wall Howard
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