Stop Light With a Progress Bar to End Road Rage

[JMcEntegart]

No more watching, wondering when that light will change from red to green.

Stop Light With a Progress Bar to End Road Rage : Read more

 

[Guest]

Nope, nope NOPE! These are BAD! What you introduce are people who will advance that last few ticks. In Thailand they have yellow->red and red->yellow->green, and people would always go before green. Maybe being red will help this, but i still think its a bad idea. Just like the previous person too.

 

[TunaSoda]

Right?
What a dumb idea, this will only lead to drag racing

 

[lvlouro]

I think it's a cool idea, but was also thinking that what Smochina said could be a reality!!!

 

[HVDynamo]

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???

 

[jitpublisher]

How it works is pretty cool, but putting these on the street will get people killed.

 

[Railgun1369]

Drag racing? Yeah, 'cause that doesn't happen now.

Gimme a break. All you have to do is look at the cross traffic light and watch it turn red. Not like this wasn't an issue before this thing existed.

And I second excalibur...how the hell did this take three years of development?

 

[Hatecrime69]

would have made more sense to make it an hourglass, so people won't expect it to turn back to green

 

[jitpublisher]

Oh yeah, surely this did not take 3 years to develop? Must have been government funded!

 

[snurp85]

I think its a good idea in concept, but wont be practical. One because of drag racing. and two because alot of lights are on a sensor which detect cars in the opposite direction and will vary the duration of the light on each side depending on traffic. Imagine walking across the street when its at the beginning of the red light and then a car comes on the other side and suddenly the light changes to green.

 

[Guest]

I couldn't agree more!

This new light will give a lot of "I'm in to much of a hurry to care about others" people an excuse to jump the gun.

The end result will be more accidents with vehicles getting broadsided and pedestrians getting hit cause they're concentrating more on the light than on whether the road is clear when they go.

-

I see too many people creeping into the intersection, anticipating the light changing well before it even changes. The stupid thing is they don't even pay attention to the light change sequence even though they drive through the same intersection on a daily basis.

Locally, the lights are staggered so instead of both sides of an intersection facing each other going at the same time, one side gets the green about 10 to 20 seconds after the other side. Then both sides stay green until the end of the set period.

 

[tsnorquist]

Progress bars are already in place. Look at the adjacent crosswalk sign for pedestrians. That will give you an accurate time of when the light will go green.

 

[lamorpa]

Modern traffic lights run on sensors which vary their timing. All new lights do this, making this device useless. How about - let a life and have patience for up to 30 seconds

 

[LORD_ORION]

Three years? What?

You could make this in an evening with some LEDs, resistors and a bread board.

 

[nachowarrior]

you can see the opposing lights turning from green to yellow to red 99% of the time anyway. So what's the point? You go through the same lights on a daily basis, you already KNOW how long they last...

 

[jitpublisher]

They "creep" into the intersection under some misguided thought that it will make the light change faster. People have all sorts of thoughts without a clue how lights really work. I actually had a guy tell me once that if you drive through town with your headlights on, clicking your bright lights off and on, the lights will change for you as you approach them. I simply agreed with him and never told him any different. This was years ago, and I still can picture him today driving around town clicking his bright lights off and on.
Too funny!!

 

[Guest]

You guys obviously have no concept of a product cycle. This is a public safety device that hangs out in the street and is expected to have extreme reliability. It probably took 2 weeks to make the prototype, 2 months to test it with various studies. Then any flaws had to be corrected and all the tests run over again. Then comes the actual manufacturing which take 6-8 months to create a reliable process, and the first unit must go enviromental, vibration, high voltage (lightning)testing. All this testing is done by the manufacturer first, before they have a product to send to the government testing. Hopefully there were no kickbacks from the government testing causing the entire process to start over. Also realize the government labs have a long list of products waiting for their turn to test. It's actually amazing something doesn't take longer.

 

[hypocrisyforever]

I'm going to disagree with you all, and say this is a great idea. Blah blah drag strip. I wouldn't mind knowing when the light was going to change. As it is, i monitor the light of the other direction to see when it will change so I am prepared.

 

[r0x0r]

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!?!?!?"

 

[AdamB5000]

I don't think it'll be as bad as what people here say. Red to Green is a big enough incentive to drag race. The countdown will only make those that already drag race continue to drag race. I think it's a good idea.

Time will tell.