This paper proposes a new method of vehicle brake lights detection and recognition using an R-filtering. Firstly, the proposed method processes the R-filtering with the first input image and then with the second one in order to detect brake lights. Secondly, the method counts the number of red pixels and computes the mean value in each R-filtered image. The difference rates between the numbers of the red pixels and between the mean values of two images are defined in this paper. Through the analysis of the difference rates, it can recognize whether brake lights are turned on or off, and whether the vehicle ahead is being approached or not. The proposed method is implemented using C language in an embedded Linux system for a high-speed real-time image processing. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm is quite successful.