LED Traffic Lights Don't Melt Snow, Cause Danger

[Marcus Yam]

Red means stop, green means go... snow means...?

LED Traffic Lights Don't Melt Snow, Cause Danger : Read more

 

[CoderDunn]

Sounds like they should have researched this a bit more before putting them to use ...

 

[imrul]

make a heating mechanism?

 

[sliem]

"But one hazard the winter snow brings that city planners may not have foreseen is the build up of snow on traffic lights."

They have not foreseen this? What are they 6 years old? or snow is new in 2009? the hell?

 

[Guest]

Simple answer. Use the same tech that is in heated windshields and put a heated cover piece of glass over the front of each light. Cheap, simple and no moving parts to break = beautiful

 

[omnimodis78]

So basically in the 21st century, our engineers still don't anticipate such practical issues? Wasn't this product put through all-weather tests? Not to mention, as sliem pointed out, are today's engineers all about books and exams, and not about practical thinking and common sense? Talk about a lack of critical thinking, but I bet each and every person involved in that design project had "logical and analytical thinker" listed as a qualification on their resumes!

 

[Guest]

Get rid of the individual round glare shields on the lights and replace them with a single large rectangular glare shield, open at the bottom.

This would solve the problem of snow building up and blocking the traffic lights and it would still prevent the glare from sun light.

 

[Guest]

Congrats Imrul you just became counter-productive!

 

[beatcoaster]

http/www.vu1.com/ESLupdate/ - FTW

 

[duzcizgi]

[citation][nom]omnimodis78[/nom]So basically in the 21st century, our engineers still don't anticipate such practical issues? Wasn't this product put through all-weather tests? Not to mention, as sliem pointed out, are today's engineers all about books and exams, and not about practical thinking and common sense? Talk about a lack of critical thinking, but I bet each and every person involved in that design project had "logical and analytical thinker" listed as a qualification on their resumes![/citation]

For an engineer now, if they want to "invent" something, they hit the patent that was taken by someone, but not materialized. Well couple of times & they give up and do the least required thing where they get their paycheck.

There must be a timeframe that a patent drops if unmaterialized for some time, let's say 5 years after issued, so that the patent drops & people are free to think over it again.

 

[Judguh]

I could see this working in the south - generate no heat while requiring little electricity. Win-Win. But, that just goes to show ya the smarts of Canada

 

[Clintonio]

Cheap solution: Change the angle of the traffic lights by a few degrees so that less snow gets in. Or, a slightly more expensive solution would be to attach a transparent shield to the front of the encasement, or, I have seen them in "cages" of horizontal sheet plastic in the UK, which does the same job.

 

[Shadow703793]

Ummm.... I would expect that many powerful LEDs will require a heatsink?!?! So, cant this heatsink be converted to melt the snow?

High power LEDs (HPLED) can be driven at currents from hundreds of mA to more than an ampere, compared with the tens of mA for other LEDs. They produce up to over a thousand [55][56] lumens. Since overheating is destructive, the HPLEDs must be mounted on a heat sink to allow for heat dissipation. If the heat from a HPLED is not removed, the device will burn out in seconds. A single HPLED can often replace an incandescent bulb in a flashlight, or be set in an array to form a powerful LED lamp.

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode

 

[g00ey]

This is news how? I've known about this for years by now.

 

[jerreece]

Seen this LED traffic light problem here in Montana this year.

 

[Marcus Yam]

[citation][nom]Judguh[/nom]I could see this working in the south - generate no heat while requiring little electricity. Win-Win. But, that just goes to show ya the smarts of Canada[/citation]
Our smarts are working just fine, thank you.

Not to say that this isn't happening in Canada, but if you click the read link, you will find that all the problems reported are from U.S. cities.

 

[jsc]

Law of Unintended Consequences.

 

[kingssman]

What a poor blow to the LED traffic light. Those things save 90% energy over their bulb counterparts which can save a city millions annually..... Shame about the snow issue

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

I was pretty sure that these have been in use for years. Not only that I thought that they had protruding metal at the top to catch any and tapered at the bottom so that nothing can stick.

 

[Guest]

paint strips of the conducting material running across my rear windshield, and have a temperature switch. whenever the temperature drops below 32F it turns on and viola, or even better put it on the lenses of the lights so snow cannot melt to the lens, the rest of the light be damned as long as we can see the lens. It cannot be that hard people. Living in the Mojave desert I wish there were a way to keep the road from melting in the summer, I would use concrete but that is not what they use here.