One Easy Solution to Traffic Congestion

We were driving home from the mountains on Sunday and it occured to me, again, that a lot of driving stress & probably congestion, could be saved if brake lights had a visual indicator (intensity?) corresponding to the force with which the driver is mashing the brake.

Maybe it's just me, since I'm a bit of a nervous nelly driver, but when someone brakes ahead of me I think they're probably just slowing down, but *maybe* they have actually slammed on the brakes. From directly behind you can't tell. So I tend to slow down a bit more than I generally need to, on the off chance they've actually slammed on the brakes. Of course, any traffic planner knows that my slow down causes a ripple effect which can take hours to clear, in congested traffic. Even if most people are not like me--they just assume the car hasn't slammed on its brakes until they practically touch its bumper--just a few people like me can cause major slow downs in traffic.

It would be such a simple solution--really red means you'd better brake hard, a little red means you don't need to. Think of that next time you're behind someone who is ever so gently riding the brakes all the down a long mountain.