The brake light means “pay attention to this car”.
Determining how much deceleration it’s experiencing is for the driver’s depth perception.
So instead of the message being “I’m slowing down by X amount here, so match that”,
the message is “I’m braking, so initiate the procedure by which you determine then match my X deceleration”
Yeah, but often you don’t know how much braking is applied. I’m sure that my idea is wishful thinking and would show some other negatives.
Another idea I just had is, that maybe, in a connected car future, cars will just share their data about how much they are braking automatically live to surrounding cars, so a car behind can react automatically as well.
Unless you are right on the other car’s bumper, you should have plenty of time to react accordingly even if they just slow down.
