"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...

Current car, now comes as standard with "hold assist" except when the
green parking brake light comes on, and you take your foot off, the rear
brake lights stay on, until you touch the accelerator to set off again, so
the manufacturer *makes* the brake lights stay on when the car is stopped
... I don't think moving into neutral is enough for them to go off, I
think the "hand" brake has to be applied, or gearbox selected to "P" to
make them go out.

I wonder if this is to appease the US market where your brake lights going
out when in a queue is often taken to imply to the car behind that you are
setting off. My sister was rear-ended as she was waiting in the middle of
the road to turn left when they lived in Boston. She braked to a halt,
indicating left, and then applied the handbrake and came off the footbrake,
waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic. A few seconds later her car was
hit from behind by a driver who had interpreted her brake lights going out
as signifying that she was starting to set off - he volunteered that reason
in his police statement.

If you were stationary, wouldn't you always have either the footbrake or
handbrake on? Or do you tend to come off the brake and just rely on being on
level ground to stop you rolling forwards or backwards? When I stop (manual
or automatic) I put the handbrake on - and release it in conjunction with
letting the clutch up (in a manual car) and applying power.


To guard against being rear-ended, if I am stopped in the middle of the road
waiting to turn, I tend to keep my brake lights on (as an exceptional case)
until I can see the car behind me has stopped, and then come off because
they have done their job of making sure he knows I'm stationary, and I don't
want to dazzle him any more than I want to be dazzled by someone else. There
was one junction near where I used to live, where I on several occasions I
had cars hoot madly and swerve around me - apparently because they had
interpreted my initial right-indicator as meaning "I am going to accelerate
and overtake" rather than "I am going to pull into the marked central
turn-right lane and come to a halt" and were then nonplussed when my brake
lights came on when they were expecting me to speed up. I suppose people saw
the "Start of dual carriageway 300 yards" sign and didn't see the
cross-roads and destination signs that preceded or followed it.