Stop Light With a Progress Bar to End Road Rage

[goldrocker]

Countdowns were installed all around the center of Targu-Mures, Romania. It's the past for us now, and it's the future for you? To be honest, I thought Romania was always a few steps behind, not forward.

 

[Parrdacc]

This might be good, might be bad I just do not know. Either way the company or companies that make these will probably charge cities a butt load of money just get them which the cost in turn will be passed down to us everyday joes and janes. Oh and they will say that it will be beneficial the public safety (how they determine that before it is released on a people I just don't get either).

 

[eyemaster]

Nice idea. There are potential problems, like some people using it to drag race, but I think people will focus too much on the red light and forgo looking at the traffic in the cross direction. They'll focus on the red light and when it turns green, just go without watching.

It's not going to create new problems, as those already happen, but I think it might make them more frequent. Putting those lights at the long long reds might be good, but don't put them everywhere.

 

[jitpublisher]

This might be good, might be bad I just do not know. Either way the company or companies that make these will probably charge cities a butt load of money just get them which the cost in turn will be passed down to us everyday joes and janes. Oh and they will say that it will be beneficial the public safety (how they determine that before it is released on a people I just don't get either).

I can see it now, will cost $85,000 a light to put these things in.
Kind of like the state of Missouri putting mile markers every 1/10th of a mile all the way across the state, in both directions! Now tell me that somebody on the Board of Transportation does not have a son-in-law who makes mile post signs!

 

[g00ey]

[citation][nom]r0x0r[/nom]If the progress bar for this traffic light is anything like the progress bar for transferring a file in Windows there's going to be a lot of angry people..."10 seconds...5 seconds...a few- TWO MINUTES!?!?!?"[/citation]

This could actually happen. In our little village we have trams which are a pain in the a** because they and the buses are prioritized over the cars in the intersection. They are everywhere, you can't throw a rock without hitting one and they create a lot of chaos on the streets. I have run into inumerable cases when it turns to green and back to red so fast that I don't even have the time to release the brakes.

 

[traesta]

really though ... anyone with experience behind the wheel can watch the adjacent lights and learn how they work so that once it turns red then your light will turn green ... but as far as using a red count down timer around the red light i think its a neat idea, so lets spend all of our government tax dollars on that instead of providing more funds to our kids schools to give them a better education ...by the time they graduate they wont even know what a light bulb is

 

[cookoy]

Hope the progress bar applies also to the Green light, so we'll know how much time we still have to beat the red light!

 

[jellico]

Yeah, I agree that having a count-down for the light change is a bad idea. It would be better to have a count-down on the green and yellow lights. When a light changes to green, I always pause and look both ways to make sure someone isn't going to run the red (a practice that has saved me from more than a couple of accidents).

Insofar as road rage is concerned, in my experience this is almost always caused by inconsiderate drivers. People who change lanes suddenly without signaling, people who merge onto the highway travelling 35MPH, people who change lanes into the far right lane at a stop light just because it's open but who are not turning right--meanwhile a line of cars forms behind that car who would have liked to take advantage of the green arrow, people who get on a multi-lane highway and don't yield the far left lane to vehicles wishing to pass, etc. This far from a comprehensive list. The point being that road-rage would probably be a very rare occurence if drivers were more considerate of others on the road.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]HVDynamo[/nom]there are a lot of instances where I see a red go to green, and then one last car races through the intersection a moment later. I have always learned to look for some idiot pushing the light before I take off at a fresh green. With lights like these people are more likely to time it and hit the gas right when it changes to green or a moment early which can spell disaster when you combine the early green starter with the pushing the red guy. Generally I like the idea, but I see it causing more issues than it fixes considering the idiots on the road today. Oh, and how the hell did something that simple take 3 years to develop???[/citation]
Darwinism in action the more they disappear the less crowded the streets will be!

 

[michaelzehr]

It'd be easy to make a snide remark like "good thing he didn't try to develop this in only two years" but I agree with gubment about the reasons why it probably took a long time.

Also we should keep in mind that the success of a product like this is going to depend a great deal on the driving culture of the region where it is installed. As an example, there's a reason why roundabouts/rotaries work well in England and not in the US. A properly used roundabout can make a road much more fuel efficient. A poorly used one is worse than a traffic light.

Finally, in response to some of the comment about road rage, it is NOT caused by other drivers who are slow. Every driver has a choice of how they will respond to traffic, stress, lights, other drivers, etc.

 

[o0RaidR0o]

I'm another who thinks this is an idea worth trialing. People will be people, it doesn't matter what you do there will always be assholes. We have the standard red light but it doesn't prevent people from ever inching forward into the pedestrian walk path. We have indicators in our cars for lane changing and turns, but it doesn't prevent people from ever using them. We have a pass/fast (left lane for the DUH! crowd) lane but it doesn't prevent people from using them to cruise below the speed limit while talking on the phone. I can go on and on, me thinks you get the picture.

 

[toastninja17]

HAHAHA, yeah, I can totally see the potential of drag racing on every street in America. Although I can also see sooo many people getting busted for it. My initial reaction upon reading the headline, though, was that it is actually a genius idea that could work really well. Until I started reading comments about drag racing up and down this thread, at which point I realized that it is very likely to happen

 

[flyinfinni]

It sounds like a good idea, but I have a feeling it would lead to more problems than it would solve.

 

[g00ey]

In Italy the traffic lights have the following meanings:
Green means drive, yellow is for decoration and red is merely an advice.

 

[mikepaul]

If they are drop-in compatible with the current LED lights, I could see them on my street in a few weeks. Those LED bundles all seem to have several dead spots mere weeks after installing. All they'd have to do is be easily retimed without removing them (perhaps why it took 3 years) since light timings change when it's not rush hour and they'd be a benefit for me...

 

[bildo123]

Hey, maybe this will FINALLY stop all the borderline mentally retarded people from pulsing their breaks 50 times to move 5 feet past the stop line and have their big boat pretty much half way in the intersection!

 

[falchard]

Excellent Idea. They should add this to all lights that are a quarter mile straight. It will give cars launch control some use.

 

[laharle_koa]

The problem I can see is a mix of people trying to make the yellow light going across as someone trying to clip the end of the red runs it. then you have 2 cars, possibly going full speed (or faster if you are trying to make the yellow), going in to the same intersection causing a decent accident and possibly killing drivers and passengers. I think that by letting people know when it's going to change to green, you'll have the same problem with people running yellow lights: they are going to cut out as much of the red light as they feel comfortable with. for aggressive drivers, they will cut more off and possibly cause more accidents.

 

[Socnom]

The Daily Mail reports that designer Damjan Stankovic believes the lights will help reduce stress as well as being kinder to the environment

If by reduce stress they mean 'getting angry because the person in front knew how long the light would be and did not go the second the counter ended', then yes.

 

[marcusmurphy]

Nice, now it will be easier to drag race at stoplights!