You must know what I'm talking about: Cars that use the same parts of their tail lights to indicate that they are braking and turning. They present a confusing situation where you can be completely uncertain as to whether they'll be changing lanes or stopping in their tracks.

Now, I recognize that usually the tail lights of cars, regardless of their coloring, are usually quite understandable. Mostly this is the case when you're driving behind someone. When you are pulling up next to them or there is another car partially blocking your view, it can be extremely unsettling.

Let me present two well-drawn scenarios, which I shall call scenarios "A" and "B" as customary. (Let it be known that anyone who has a scenario "1 and 2" or "I and II" is disreputable to me).

Imagine that I am in the blue car in both scenarios. Imagine that I am as equally well-drawn as the cars pictured. The mustard-yellow car is a Ford, or some other stupid company where the tail lights are all red. (My car is this way too, and I am not happy about it. I am also not going to base my decision to buy a car solely based upon the color of the tail lights). Both scenarios take place on a 3 lane highway, expressway, or boulevard. You take your pick. All three will piss me off equally.

Scenario A: There is a guy whose tail lights are near or even to my head along the forward axis. By this I mean that I can really only see the one tail light that's closest to me (the left one in this scenario). This only shows two lanes of traffic.

As you can see, I will be in the other driver's blind spot. So when he starts signaling that he's about to crash into me, all I will see is his left tail light turning a bright red. I will have almost no time to get out of his way so I must react quickly.

On the other hand, when he taps his brakes a couple of times because the traffic in front of him is slowing down, all I will see is his left tail light turning a bright red. In this case I do not have to do anything..

Of course, the problem is that if the traffic in front of him is slowing down, he may decide to either slow down also, or quickly zig into the left lane.. my lane. It's hard for me to predict which way he'll go with this decision, and as I said I'm in his blind spot. A very ambiguous situation at best!

Scenario B: There is the same mustard-yellow car, and a green car is riding right up his ass. The cars are arranged such that from my vantage point, I cannot see any tail lights on the mustard car save for the left one. (The green car is blocking my view of the rest). The middle lane is, obviously, empty here. I am considering changing to the middle lane because I have to exit soon.

Again, I face the following problem: does the mustard car's blinking tail light mean that he is slowing down because of traffic in the right lane, or that he's about to change to the middle lane?

As you can most likely imagine (unless there is something wrong with your mental faculties), these are only 2 of the many possible scenarios that you may encounter when dealing with all-red tail lights. Hell, if I were to enumerate them all, I may have to get into scenario "AA", "AB", "AC", and the like. And that would only serve to piss off you, the reader, because you would mutter to yourself, "Why the fuck couldn't he just number the scenarios '27', '28', and '29'?"

The most egregious red-tail-light-bestower is Ford, as best as I can estimate. Here I show two examples of their shitty design:

What is worse, many vehicles simply use the same bulbs for running lights, brake lights, and turn signals. I, below, show three well-drawn examples of tail light construction. These are numbered 1, 2, and 3 because they are examples and not scenarios:

It must be plainly obvious to you that I would prefer example 3.

Example 1: This tail light has one bulb, or multiple bulbs on the same circuit. (We shall, for now, assume that one bulb is the same as multiple bulbs wired in parallel or series because the net effect on driving will be the same). When the headlights are on, the tail light glows at perhaps 50% power. When braking, the tail light glows at 100% power. Ditto 100% power when flashing the turn signal.

Example 2: This tail light has some combination of separate bulbs for running lights (when the headlights are on) and brake/tail lights. I have divided up the example into 2 sub-examples: I and II. Either way, in your peripheral vision it will be hard to tell whether they are signaling or braking.

Example 3: There is a red section for brake and running lights. The bulbs in this section are at 50% or so when running, and 100% whilst braking. The yellow section is used exclusively for signaling. You are all familiar with this design.

Now why in the chimp-fuckers hell would car companies not _always_ go with example 3? It seems that this is clearly the least ambiguous route to take whereby using your peripheral vision on a rainy day after smearing feces on all your windows you could immediately understand what any other car is doing.

I would love to say that I will boycott cars with red turn signals, but since I have one and need to drive places, that's just not in the cards. I really just want everyone to be aware of this problem, and to write their congressmen and -women to have it rectified immediately.

I thank you in advance for your help!