Automatic Hazard Lights?

I've seen that a lot of crash videos and believe it is automatic under many circumstances - too often for dazed or confused drivers to manage. More than once have I had a lengthy search of a dashboard to figure out where the User Interface guys hid what should be a prominent button.

I'd give a 100% likelihood of being linked to airbag deployment.

However - I see this for Smart (brand) cars:

Activating the hazard warning flasher
after an emergency braking maneuver
If you bring the vehicle to a complete stop
by strongly braking at a speed of more than
43 mph (70 km/h), the hazard warning
flasher automatically comes on as soon as
the vehicle is at a standstill.

As far as I can tell it's not required nor prohibited in the USA so I suspect makers are adding this

Can't tell in the video what the car was. Lots of european cars automatically turn on their hazard-warning lamps after an "event". I'm not sure what the criteria are for triggering them.

Yes, they appear to come on at the moment of impact before the vehicle even stopped moving. On modern vehicles there are both physical and software triggers for these events, physical sensors being on the body and also in some of the electronic modules.

Seems a good feature, so why not? Fuel pumps are also cut off automatically in minor collisions. How did I learn that?

Thanks, one less thing for me to remember after a collision ;-)

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Actually had this happen to me last week! A stupid deer jumped in front of my vehicle (on the freeway, at night) and smashed the front end. I'm fine, but the airbags deployed and the hazard lights went on. After the tow truck arrived, I turned them off using the normal switch.

Glad to hear that everything in the car's safety system appears to have worked as intended.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list