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Stoplights to Mete Out Punishment?
gilrain writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that traffic engineers have created a stoplight that deals with speeding. According to the article, 'It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment. It doesn't write a ticket. It immediately turns from green to yellow to red.' This is not just a prototype: it is in use now at an intersection in the Bay Area. Does stopping speeders before others serve a purpose other than petty revenge? Is it even safe to change expected stoplight patterns, especially for drivers in a hurry?"
Still, one thing to be really clear about is (a) don't set it up so that if you really speed you make it through the yellow, but (b) don't make it so far away that you catch someone ahead of the speeder with the red light!
By the way, I've had lights change to red on me for no apparent reason, and wondered if this policy was already implemented. It was in the Bay Area, but not Pleasanton.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
That's good, instead of speeding, now they can speed *and* run a red light. I hope it's timed so that the light is far enough away that they have time to stop, and not run through it.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
If the driver is all ready speeding, what is going to stop him/her from blowing through the red light. Seems like a possibly dangerous way to deal with the problem.
So instead of just speeders we'll have speeders that run red lights....
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In the town where I grew up about 20 years ago, there was a light that did that. It was on a 25 MPH road, and if you were going faster than 28 or so, it would turn red. We would go out of our way to avoid that light.
The office of homeland security has determined that the Enemies of America (R) are using the public streets, and as such, these must be closely controlled, if not eliminated altogether. Dissent only helps the terrorists, and shows that you are not a true Patriot(R).
It would certainly piss me off if some guy was speeding ahead of me and caused the light ahead of us to turn red, stopping both of us. People on the road get mad at other drivers too often already; do we really need to give people another excuse to get mad at someone, blaming "that idiot speeder" for making them late?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Of the Dukes of Hazard where the local pig... er umm Sheriff had a pop-up Stop sign to charge passerbys and new residents.
It was deemed crooked by the show, and it's crooked now.
Why leave the camera out? I'd love to see the look on some lead foot's face as his green light suddenly turns to red!
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So when the light turns red early, does it give a green to the next in line? Sounds like a recipe for disater.
Speeding is a habit, and another related habit is that of running red lights quickly after a yellow (ie, its yellow when they see it, so it MUST be yellow when they go through it.) I've seen quite a few near misses because of people burning through a sudden red becuase they'd rather not have to slow down.
This will just mean more people running red lights. That could mean more accidents, or it may not, just like speeding causes accidents sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. The end result is that it doesn't really accomplish anything; it just converts the offense.
I'm colorblind you insensitive clod!!
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
That seems incredibly unsafe. Not only could it cause a serious accident, think about what it's going to do to traffic. Especially in a major city like San Francisco, you've gotta have coordinated traffic lights or the streets will be a mess.
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This is no different than metering lights on freeway onramps that control traffic flow. This one just happens to pay attention to speeders.
Yep, In a town called Ladner just outside Vancouver, BC, Canada. Got stopped too. Bastards.
Well, y'know, there's that whole enforcement of the law thing. Unless that falls under 'petty revenge' in your book. One might also imagine that it'd be effective in encouraging the typical driver to actually obey posted speed limits (though I can't speak for the asshats who'll take it upon themselves to try and 'beat the system' by speeding faster or running the light.)
Is it even safe to change expected stoplight patterns, especially for drivers in a hurry?
Oh, heaven forfend that drivers be expected to pay attention to the road and traffic signals, especially so when they're in a hurry and thus simply have no choice but to violate traffic laws! Gee, officer, I just wasn't expecting that kid to cross the road--and I was in a hurry, so you can hardly blame me for it!
Just because it's easy to get away with speeding doesn't mean it's legal. Just because you're busy, late, or otherwise incapable of managing your life and time in a reasonable fashion doesn't mean that it's somehow more okay for you to speed than somebody who speeds for the hell of it. The fact that you can manufacture any number of scenarios detailing How This Can Go Wrong doesn't change the fact that the person triggering the system is violating traffic laws in the first place. Try following traffic laws. Seriously. You'd be amazed at how well the universe keeps from collapsing on itself when one follows the speed limit, signals lane changes, and maintains adequate braking distance.
On a side note, these aren't all that new--they have 'em in Alexandria, VA, and Bethesda has something similar (warning lights flash at you if you're going too fast.)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I was in Switzerland last year and I noticed that the stoplights there would show the yello signal in both directions. So if you're at a red light, the yellow will go on to let you know the green is getting ready to change in the opposing lane.
In the states, this doesn't happen. It's almost as if we can't do that to people in the US - they'd run the yellow at the red. More evidence that Europeans are a more civilized in their driving?
If the the light in the other direction suddenly turns green... Joking aside, when I am driving, I watch the light that I am approaching. At a certain distance I make a decision that I am going going through the light even if it turns yellow. The faster I am going, the farther that distance is.
...but also everyone behind him/her. Doesn't sound as if they've thought very hard about what such a traffic light would actually do. Of course, when was the last time that something originating from California made practical sense?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I should add that the light is 350 feet away, and if the speeder is going 60MPH, that's 88ft/sec, giving them just enough room and time to speed up and run the light when they see it change.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
So does this mean that the light for the crossing street will turn green faster too? That could lead to some nasty wrecks if there isn't a buffer period where both lights are red.
this removed the benefits from speeding... namely, beating a traffic light or getting somewhere on time when you are running late.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That's what the cops say. ;-) First you have speeding, then running red lights, then running stop signs, soon you're up to mass-murder.
This new stop light just gets you through the gateway just a little quicker.
m
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
As far as speeding tickets goes, it is a doucmented fact that traffic laws are not for safety but revenue generation. This bad boy will probably pay for itself in no time and continue to reap dividends for years to come.
Combine the "smart" light with the auto ticket-giving camera (don't need to pay for the copy to write tickets!) and city budget problems will be cured overnight. Oh, and when people get smart and start slowing down, just decrease the yellow-light time and watch your profits rise!
America: Best profit-making government money can buy.
Yeah, right.
I drive on Herndon Parkway in Herndon, Virginia every day to and from work and there are 3 stoplights over an a stretch of about 3 miles that behave this way. Been in place for the last year I've lived in the area, I dunno how much before that.
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Hear! Hear!
It's intrinsically wrong to punish other people for one person's crime. One idiot blazes through a bunch of traffic but everyone has to stop for his speed-induced red light? Aren't there enough causes of road rage already?
I think they should take the extra step and put in pop up tire spikes. That'll get 'em.
What?
It seems to me that if they really wanted to stop people from speeding, they should take a picture of the speeder and record the speed, then have somebody at the DMV mail out tickets once a week. People would respect a $50 ticket more then a red light (especially after going a few miles through such lights), and it wouldn't cause traffic congestion.
Isn't this just entrapment to get you to run a red light, or cause an accident? Not to mention the havoc it will wreck on the traffic patterns.
This is going to cause a lot of worse problems, and for what? To fine a few speeders?
This is the worst idea EVER. Yeah, I'm going to feel *real fucking safe* when suddenly the most batshit nuts, speeding drivers on the road are unexpectedly and without warning coming to sudden stops because they've triggered the "punishment light". To say nothing of the collateral damage caused by the fact that everybody on the road winds up stopping.
Vehicular safety ONLY FUNCTIONS when the behavior of all of the drivers is as PREDICTABLE as possible. That's why we have stoplights in the first place, if you think about it.
I can't wait for the first time it rains in this area. One person will speed, the light will suddenly turn red, half the cars will notice and come to a sudden stop, some of the cars will stop more slowly than others because of the slippery road, some will hydroplane... just THINK of the number of rear-end collisions you'd get. (And, of course, in each case, the insurance companies would place "at fault" the person in rear for failing to notice the without-warning red light immediately and stop immediately, or for failing to predict the person in front of them might come to a stop without warning...)
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now i can just use this as another reason to be late to work when I'm really going through the pain in the ass process of networking a Win98 machine that's not taken care of AT ALL with my XP rig that i take care of (as much as Windows can be taken care of without a hammer, anyways)
I personally know of (and have triggered) similar stoplights in Washington, DC as well as in Herndon, VA. These particular lights have been around for quite a while.
The exact locations of these lights escape me for the moment, however.
This will make for excellent driver behavior modification. In the town where I used to live, people habitually stopped their cars in the intersections for red lights (just past the stop bar). When they put in sensors, people quickly figured out they needed to stop on the sensor - which was where the car was supposed to be in the first place. Likewise, if speeding produces no benefit, people will stop speeding.
As for running red lights, cameras can mete out punishment for that, too.
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NO CARRIER
Say you've got 2 cars speeding towards the light. It turns red fast, and in the process could easily cause an accident. This is not to argue who is culpable for the accident, but a system like this would make things more dangerous rather than less.
IIRC in california they already let cars run red lights if they are turning right, under the "pedestrian culling" program.
I saw these 3 or 4 years ago during a travel in armacao de pera in portugal. It was really annoying when somebody behind you was too fast and you had to wait on the lights because of him.
it greatly increases the odds that the speeding driver will run an unexpected red light, potentially killing someone if the intersecting light turns green at the same time. lights should be consistent, always taking the same amount of time to turn from yellow to red, w the exception of an absence of traffic at one side causing the (same slow, consistent) shift to yellow to red.
in some ways this is like high-speed police chases. I just read a stat that 33% of such chases end in a bystander fatality. I bet a large number of those innocent deaths would be avoided if the cops wouldn't endanger *everyone* by making it many speeding vehicles instead of just 1. *
*I know many people will disagree w this 2nd point and I have mixed feelings on it myself... but the light seems even more obviously wrong to me
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
I've seen these type of lights here in Northern VA. Herndon I believe. There are signs that say the lights will change to red if you're speeding. It uses sensors in the road.
:-)
"Invented" my eye.
---- The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. -Thomas Jefferson
It's not going to make my drive on I-85 in Atlanta ANY safer. Many of the speeding problems are on Interstates, where such a light will have no effect.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
So we go from road rage to red rage...great. How long is it before we see drivers taking the time they're forced to sit at the red light to add their own personal "piece of flair" to said red light?
First, San Francisco is notorious for having a high number of 'red light runners'...folks on bicycles are getting hit, killed, and maimed all too frequently just for this reason. (no to mention other motorists)
Second, a new way to have fun at other's expense!
1. Drive speed limit or below, wait until traffic is backed up behind you.
2. As you approach a green light, speed up unexpectedly, so the lights begins to cycle.
3. Speed through yellow, leaving all those morons behind you with their middle fingers in the air!
4. ???
5. Profit!
I think that it's a great idea to stop speeders. And with most/all lights aware when there's police/fire/ambulance running through it makes sense. They're the only ones who should be speeding. The one very bad scenario is that the speeder blows through the red light and slams in to traffic that then has the right of way. If they're speeding that much they either don't care much about red lights or are speeding so much they don't have time to stop.
Going to reply rather than moderate...
These lights are in heavy use in Northern Virginia. They are mostly in place around residential neighborhoods to keep speeds and road noise down. They also double as extra safety, as kids are around.
It's a lot easier to time crossing an intersection if you know that all the cars are going one speed or slower. This is true wether you are walking across it or making a turn in a car at said intersection.
The biggest concern are Kids. They are careless. They may look left then right, but if they see a car FAR off to the left, they won't pay any attention to it...even if it is going 90mph and will overtake them before they can cross the road.
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
The ground behind dumpsters along the St. Patrick's Day parade route in new York will be electrified and "smart-monitored" to prevent unacceptable public urination. The "smart-monitors" are designed to detect small increases in both temperature and humidity, and will activate an electric grid to immediately stun the perpetrator by delivering a charge up the "line of offense."
I mean seriously, when exactly did Americans decide that the only way to get your neighbor to do EXACTLY what you want is to legislate him into the ground?!? What the hell happened to the "live and let live" ethos that took hold after we finally crawled out from under the puritan gravestone?!?
I just love the fact that I can't buy certain property in my town unless I agree to live under the micro-rules of a private group of homeowners who want to tell their neighbors what color their doormat should be. I thought being a US citizen and adhering to state and federal law was enough to allow me to own and manage my own property, but its good to know I have a bunch of busy-body neighbors with no lives to involve themselves in my personal business!
This country is not being flushed down the drain, it is being air-rammed down the drain with a 1000psi motor.
-rt
Wouldn't issuing a ticket to the car's owner be less disruptive AND provide a source of revenue? I mean, sure, there are cars that won't have their license plates be readable but that's already illegal now in most places, it's just not enforced. I'm guessing that most casual speeders won't go through the trouble of obscuring their license plate or take the risk of getting an additional fine for it if they're stopped for something else.
The town I grew up in had a stoplight that changed when cars approaching it exceeded the 25-mph speed limit.
Incidentally, the city is Alexandria, Virginia and the street is King Street between Janney's Lane and Upland Place. See map here.
y
People are always speeding everywhere. Wouldn't every light just end up a 4 way red light?
Here are a couple reasons why:
The walk sign - What is the light going to do for pedestrians? When the walk sign is on, pedestrians are crossing the street. The Bay Area has a large amount of pedestrian traffic and there is no way you will get them all out of the street fast enough for this type of light change. People are programmed to get across the street quickly when the hand starts blinking. Will they just switch from a white-walk signal to a static red hand?
Traffic Patterns - Traffic lights are closely connected to the lights in their vicinity. If you change the cycle of one light, it offsets the traffic patterns for all the cars in that area with rippling affects. Its often a very delicate balance and it doesn't seem logical to just throw that out the window to stop a few speeders. If its a big deal, get the cops out there and give them some tickets.
We can have more deadly crashes at intersections. Sounds like a bad idea to me. Like Oregon's law that if even your back bumper is in the intersection when the light turns red, you can get a ticket. That causes a lot of deadly accidents too, as yellow lights have not been lengthened to account for the reduced stopping time.
It works pretty well at regulating traffic, though not at boosting revenue for the city. Rather than build more, lately they've been parking a photo-radar van around town: that has the added benefit of filling the city's coffers.
1)Speedy drivers
...
2)Speed cam
3)Speed detecting lights
5)Profit!
Seems these cities want to collect more fine tax.
- "They misunderestimated me."
This is the generation that will have to fight an unconventional war. Stop lights which spy on us, DRM which curtails our enshrined rights, ID cards and biometrics which stick our details into huge databases, which we have to basically trust not to share our information widely, all of these are fronts in the battle between individual freedom and the combined might of corporation and government.
This will be the World War one of our generation. I am just away out now. I will walk past McDonalds without going in as a symbol of my personal fight against consumer culture. I suggest you all do the same.
In the state of Victoria, Australia, many major intersections actually have speed cameras mounted at the lights, so that if you speed up for the yellow, you get an automatic speeding ticket. If you're unlucky enough to miss it, you get another ticket for running the red light. It can get quite expensive . .
;)
To beat this, you have to speed up really really fast then slam the brakes on hard just as you get to the lights, so that your car is going sideways through the lights and they can't see your license plate on the photo
*meep*
I would hate to be blind person crossing with
my dog on the opposite intersection when the
light suddenly went from red to green.
Also, what happens if you get speeders going
in perpendicular directions towards the same
intersection. At night, it could flicker like
a Christmas tree.
Not to defend unsafe driving, but the reason that nearly everyone speeds is that many speed limits are set so such a low common denominator that you'd assume that brain-damaged chimpanzees were used as the baseline cases. Most people will drive a reasonable speed regardless of what's posted. There are always a few idiots that will drive at insane speeds regardless of what's posted.
The reason that they do this is that they're addicted to traffic ticket revenue, which is essentially a randomly-enforced "tax lottery" - especially in my area where average highway traffic moves at 80 MPH+ (I've been "going with the flow" along with two dozen other drivers at 95+ in the city). I'm just waiting for them to pair this up with red-light cameras and 2-second yellow lights for the ultimate in revenue generation...
Yes, this sounds cynical (and it is), but if these jackasses were really interested in little things like public safety then they'd probably put some actual effort into designing safe intersections, traffic interchanges, force land developers to plan traffic flow, setting speed limits that are reasonable, etc.
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Actually, conditioning works _really_ well on humans. It is all in the details, of course, but there really is no reason this would not work just fine to slow people down before the stoplight.
What I really react to is the "it is my right to speed"-type comments. No. It isn't. That is sort of why they made that regulation a law. As one who has lost a friend, I can tell you that you do _not_ have a right to ignore traffic laws. You have a right to protest them. You have a right to lobby (with your eloquence and your money) to change them. You do _not_, by any measure, have a right to ignore them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
One of the arguments for keeping the barrier tolls on the Garden State Parkway is that they slow down traffic. But they only slow it down at the toll. People just speed between them.
This will do little more. People speeding before the light will have to stop for it, and continue speeding after it. All they've done is slow them down through the intersection. And once they've learned it's there, they'll only slow down for the radar gun and speed up after.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
"Is it even safe to change expected stoplight patterns, especially for drivers in a hurry?"
Intersections are dangerous and a good driver will be on the lookout to stop anyway. Being in a hurry doesn't change this. For places where there are lights without an intersection, it still doesn't matter as a good driver will concentrating on the road as unexpected things happen all the time.
'It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment' I thought, "YES! they put railguns or rocket launchers on them. Or something less deadly, like paintball guns!" Then i read that it just turns the light red. Lame. The only way to combat speeders is with high explosives, every one knows that.
In a sense, it seems more appropriate to meat out punishment that fits the crime.
This seems better than an arbitrary ticket that costs thousands of dollars once insurance costs are factored in.
I bet you it is more effective, too.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I can't find any links online, tho... :-(
The most dangerous problem with traffic at intersections is when someone runs a red light, risking collision with cross traffic. Once speeders realize that this light is "punishing" them, some will slow down, but unfortunately, this idea will backfire with others, causing MORE people to IGNORE the signal and run red lights, INCREASING the risk of innocent people getting injured in a collision. Bad idea!
What if there's speeding in all four directions at the same time? Will it give all reds?
this won't work, it will cause more trouble than it solves.
I will be the first to admit that i hate red lights, and that i speed up because 'i'm in a hurry' after hitting too many of them'
i'm not a 'huge' speeder, but i 'go with the flow', and if we're all sailing at 60mph in a 40, why should we all have to stop (and get rear ended? yay!)
Runnin' On Empty
This is just as braindead as those cities that turned out to be using short yellow lights to keep up their revenue from ticketing people running red lights. Never mind that by lengthening the yellow they could eliminate running stoplights almost entirely and dramaticly reduce accidents/save lives.
A lot of traffic engineers also seem to have this problem of wanting to treat vehicle traffic as some kind of fluid dynamics problem. Drivers realize when they are being manipulated and tend to react in unpredicted ways. Simple traffic systems with simple feedback controls work best.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
In Virginia they have them. It is pretty easy to see the sensor. The sensor is in the street. It has a big darker sqaure around where it's at. If you slow down as your going over it. It will not change the light. Then you get to continue speeding.
Speeder not the only one punished... ...but also everyone behind him/her.
It's San Francisco. Individuals are not responsible for their actions. Guilt only applies to groups. They're all driving cars, so they're all equally guilty. And they all need to get over their love affairs with cars and use public transit. (Even if it doesn't go where then need to go, or takes several hours to replace a 10-minute car trip and costs far more, or stops running after 6 PM and doesn't restart until Monday.)
And shit is Shinola.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Much more effective... mount a weapon (laser, rail gun, etc) to the stoplight control system.
If the system detects a speeder, the weapon fires and destroys the offending vehicle.
Umm so what happens when two cars are speeding into an intersection from different directions? Do both get red lights? that would effectively stop all traffic. If it picks the first speeder it finds, then the other one effectively has a free pass to speed.
The result of these lights is that the locals memorize which lights do this, and will adjust their driving speed accordingly to avoid a red light. Overall, I'd say that this effectively reduces speeding, but only in the immediate vicinity of the stop light.
Anyway, great to see that the rest of the world is catching on, even those guys over there in California, who aren't really known for innovation anyway ;) Uh, wait...
I've noted that alot of the lights are actually timed so if you go a given speed, it's all green. But in most cases, if you actually go the speed limit, you are assured to actually catch every light. Specificly there is this 30 zone that goes right into downtown. I can either drive the entire distance at 30mph and stop every 3 or 4 city blocks or I can go 35mph and stop only a handful of times.
While the timming is off in this case, I find it an excelent system to keep me within the speed zone that they approve of.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I saw traffic lights like these in Germany. Some towns put a pedestrian crossing with traffic light at the town limits (so there does not need to be an intersection); if you come speeding into town, the light turns red. Usually the speed limit in town is half of what it is on highways, so there is a great potential for speeding due to carelessness, this is a nice way of grabbing a drivers attention without giving a ticket right away.
...is a red light. Sure, I see people "run" them all the time, but that's because the light turned red within a second or so. Anyone, angry, drunk, or whatever, who sees a red light right now... will stop.
They will stop partially because they are "programmed" to do so, but also out of self preservation- a red light means cars coming from the other side.
This mechanism disrupts the natural order of things, turning a neutral respected tool (the stop light) into an instrument of morality (because no one is being helped directly by you stopping because you were in a hurry).
The overall effect is that if you are driving and the light turns red... not only might there not be any cars who need to go by, but those cars might not even have a red light!
Now brought to you by the Ministry of Traffic: Intersections with four red lights at once! For the convenience of all!
I hope that the "shotgun vote" that defeated metric streetsigns goes into effect here.
In poorly designed stoplight situations, there can be an area called "the dilema zone" where drivers get caught in the situation where they cannot stop their car without crossing the stop line. If one is going the full speed within the dliema zone when the light first turns yellow, they are screwed... they will physically have to run the red light because slamming the brake pedal won't be enough.
Usually, dilema zone situations are created by there being too short of a yellow light sequence to allow the car in the zone to go through, or the speed limit being too high to corrispond to the yellow light time they wanted to use. Fixing one or the other elimiates the zone.
Therefore, I fear this stop light project is headed for failure. A true speeder is either going to run the yellow or red light. The only people its going punish are the legal speed cars behind the speeders...
Lights are interdependent with each other. Almost always, if you have one light turning red, that means you have another light turning green. Doesn't this mean that driver who gets the go-ahead now will start to happily move forward, and be side-impacted by the speeding red light driver?
The first accident that happens at that intersection will be the end of this.
BC
These lights used to be installed in some residential areas around Herndon, VA. The speed limit was 25MPH, and if you were going over 30-35, they'd turn red. A friend discovered that if you went 60MPH, you could make it through before the light turned red :)
The vulters^H^H^H^H^H^H lawyers are going to be tripping over each other when the next accident occurs at that intersection.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I thought the reason for speeding was entertainment.
I was recently at a talk by one of the ATSAC guys at The Center for Land Use and Interpretation (clui.org), and they do something like this already.
Late at night if you are speeding along, the loops pick it up, and will not change a light from red to green forcing you to stop. This assumes that there was previously some cross traffic in the intersection youare comming up to which caused the light to turn red.
everybody's seen the timed stoplights where if you drive $SPEED_LIMIT you will hit all greens if you go faster or slower or get out of sync with the light you wind up stopping. This encourages people to go the limit as would the idea of changing it just for speeders I like it
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All free-thinking American men will flock to Canada to avoid dying for BushCo's oil-thirsty millionaires. Let the oil companies' exec kids go die for oil.
Bush is a fucking war criminal.
of drivers that think a turn signal is a deflector shield rather than a tool to show "intent" to change lanes -- thus the word "signal".
Seriously, there is a better way. If you time the lights so that taking off from a step, smoothly accelerating to the speed limit and then maintaing the legal limit to the next light causes you to hit concurrent lights just as they turn green then it becomes useless to speed and all drivers get the best results by going the speed limits.
I'm not a civil engineer or city planner or anything, but I've seen well planned traffic light systems and I know what they look like. People move through stopping AS LITTLE as possible. It is easier on vehicles, safer for drivers, and much less stressful to drivers if they can just get up to speed and maintain it. This light is all for show as it will probably be more detrimental than helpful. It is just a way for local government to wave its dick without accomplishing... well, dick.
Whoever created this idea wasn't thinking about public safety, they were thinking revenue. Just because the light changes faster won't make the driver stop. If the driver is speeding and in a hurry they are going to blow the red light whenever it changes. This means that drivers who would have stopped for a read light with a longer yellow will not and that means they are going to run the intersection and slam into the person who got the green light. This can only lead to increased accidents at those intersections.
Take it from someone whose wife was slammed into by those running red lights, 4 times in 5 years in the pathetic state of Illinois.
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
| | |
| | me, 85 mph |
| V |
--------- -------------
you, 85 mph O
-----> O light, changes quickly
O from red to green to red...
--------- -------------
| |
| |
| |
here is some text to prevent the postercommenter filter from not letting me post my message. this is really dumb, i think i should be able to post it, it's not like it's totally off topic, and who doesn't like some good ascii art once in a while, not that i'm saying that mine is good, but that it's technically art, and it's, well, ascii.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts has had this for many years. Haven't heard of any accidents because of it. Of course, traffic usually moves very close to the speed limit - the MP's (military police) on base will ticket you for 1mph over. ;-)
On another note, it's really nice if there is someone behind you that you don't like following you - time it just right (in a vehicle with adequate acceleration), and you could trigger the light for them while passing safely through. =)
There was a light that did this on Herndon Parkway. It was set wrong. If you went the speed limit it would almost always turn red. The only way to make the light and not hate yourself for driving slow was to take it at 15 over. It couldn't change to red fast enough then, and you would make it. If you did miss the light it was proper etiqutte to lay on the horn until it changed, optionally followed by a peal out.
I can't tell you how many times I see people hit the gas because the perpendicular cars get the red, when in fact their lane gets a delayed green. This is scary stuff. I would avoid that intersection.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Okay, so we agree the red light isn't going to stop hard core scofflaws.
How about popup tire rippers?
That you are a US-hating, Euro-loving loser.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
An effctive alternative is a traffic light that is red and turn green a fixed amount of time after an approaching car has come to a certain distance. Those who were going too fast have to stop, others can drive on smoothly.
I remember in a control engineering course, 20 years ago, that one of our professors told us how traffic lights were often timed in such a way to slow down speeding traffic. I can't for the life of me remember anything more - but it was to do with wave theory. Basically if you maintained a steady speed of say 25 then you would synchronize with all the greens on a stretch of a road. Wish I could remember more for you. This had nothing to do with detecting on coming fast traffic.
Winton
Here's a thread discussing the lights in Northern Virginia.
I picked this up off of Neil Gaiman's journal today. I wonder how far in advance the light would have to change to stop a Mini going mach 3. BBC article
try using embarassment. Have a sign that flashes, "Slow Down, Stupid!"
Table-ized A.I.
I agree with most saying this will not work, but even more. This WILL cause more accidents and the lawsuits against San Francisco by both citizens and insurance companies is going to shoot through the roof.
I can't imagine this is a new idea. I would have expected this to have been tried around 1955 or so, around the time reliable traffic detectors were developed.
Sure, it'll save a few lives, but MILLIONS will be LATE! - Homer
I drive a fairly fast car, and the truth is, driving it at high speed isn't that much fun. Going 100 on the freeway really doesn't feel that much different from going 65 (apart from being really nervous about the impending ticket). However, acceleration is a totally different story. I really enjoy being at the front of the line at a stop light. When the light goes green, I accelerate as quickly as possible until I hit 5 - 10 mph over the limit. I then let off the gas and back down to whatever the speed limit is. I've been known to stop for yellow lights when I could legally continue, just to get that feeling from stomping on the accelerator.
So, a light like this is a dream come true for me. If I approach the light just a bit over the speed limit, I'm gauranteed to get an opportunity to race away when the light goes green. Yay!
We live in such a great society where the percentage and raw number of people committing crimes is so low that we have to have stricter laws than before. You can get punished for your actions that possibly increase the risk an undeterminable percentage. We will always find someone to persecute, it makes us feel safe.
What ever happened to the timed lights that I like. I mean in the city, as long as you did the speed limit, you made it through every light. If you sped you ran into almost every light and then wait for it to turn green while the grandma pulls up behind you as you start to go again.
Portugal has that for years...
Now I know why it takes me so long to get to work. I spend my life speeding from red light to red light!
This isn't really big news to me. They had this in Boulder, Colorado for (at least) the last 5 years. Not every light as on this, but there are a few. They are clearly marked.
I think it's been there for a while already....
Pretty annoying but effective, if my meory serves right... I haven't been driving there for a while!
How about waking up 10 minutes earlier to have a little extra time so you aren't in a hurry? Just because you're in a hurry doesn't mean you get to charge those reds, or speed through traffic. If you get a ticket, cause an accident or injury or death, just because you were 'in a hurry', I don't have too much sympathy. Granted, accidents do happen and there's a bit more to consider while on the road. But being in a hurry is a piss-poor excuse.
suteki!
Oh Shit it's yellow, better step on it!
This sounds like its just going to cause a lot more accidents. Whether its from the person skidding to a stop and *bam* accident, or the person doesnt even try to stop, thus running the redlight and hitting someone else.
A couple of things that I gleaned from reading the article:
The sensor makes its decision 350 feet down the road. At 50 mph, this is ~5 seconds away, plus braking. (50mph = 73ft/sec). With braking, it's probably double that, so say you have 10 seconds to stop.
Secondly, the article sort of glosses over how fast it turns from green->yellow->red. Green->yellow can be instantaneous, that's no big deal, but it's the delay before yellow->red that matters.
So, if from 350 feet away, the light turns yellow, then 5 seconds later turns red, I'd say that probably it's not really THAT hurried of a light, from a safety point of view.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
I see a lot of people complaining that drivers will be surprised when the light turns red. This doesn't make any sense to me, since you rarely know when the light will turn. Even if you know the intersection well, there are only two ways to know when a light is going to go from green to red. First, if there's a pedestrian crosswalk, and the crosswalk goes from "WALK" to "DON'T WALK", then your light may be about to turn red (this isn't always the case though). Second, if for some reason you saw the light turn green (this is rare unless you're sitting at the red), AND you know exactly how long the light stays green, then you know when to expect a red. Apart from these two conditions, it is almost impossible to tell when a light is going to turn red, so I wouldn't expect any more paniced stops at an anti-speeding intersection than I would expect at any other intersection.
In my neighborhood, there is a light that has a hundred yards back from the light that causes it to go yellow. There's no connection with your speed, of course. They just don't want anyone to NOT have to stop. For those who want to know, it's at Newhall and Monroe just outside Santa Clara. I'm sure it's not unique. I'd be overjoyed if someone sabotaged it someday.
I would take Pruneridge as an alternate route, but there is a nasty radar trap at the I-880 undercrossing. The revenuers make a mint off it.
All of this could be avoided if they would conduct honest traffic surveys and not set speed limits lower than the 85th percentile, as proper traffic engineering practice dictates. But though speed limits were originally designed as a means to control unreasonable law enforcement (before speed limits, the cop could decide anything over 15 mph was not "reasonable or prudent"), they clearly have strayed from that purpose.
According to the article, the camera that measures speed is 350 feet from the intersection, and the speed limit is 40 miles per hour on one direction. Assuming a speeder is speeding 50 miles per hour in that direction, and assuming that the camera can accurately measure the speed of the vehicle 50 feet out, for a total of 400 feet from the intersection, that means the speeder has to get their vehicle 400 feet at least before the light turns read. Most lights have an absolute minimum safety margin on the yellow light that is around 3-4 seconds before the red goes on. Let's say 4 seconds. In order to get out INTO the intersection before the light changes red, the speeder only has to increase her speed when approaching the intersection from 50 MPH to 70 MPH, or 102.7 feet per second times 4 seconds, thus traversing the distance out into the intersection BEFORE the light turns red.
Of course the speeder has to accelerate to 70 MPH before entering the "zone" where the camera can measure speed.
Now what was once an only slightly unsafe problem (someone doing 10 over the limit) becomes VERY UNSAFE, someone doing 30 over the limit.
All I can say, is BRILLIANT!
Perhaps these brilliant traffic engineers will then think, "Ah ha! We can decrease the yellow light duration to nothing. That will solve it!"
Wrong again. Someone like that obviously doesn't understand the psychology of those speeders. Removing the minimum yellow duration makes the intersection VERY dangerous. If they just turn the light instantly red, and keep the lights in the other directions red too, speeders will learn that the "instant red" light is "not really a red light at all" and will learn to ignore it and speed on through. Now you'll have speeders AND red-light runners. That's a lovely combination.
Brilliant!
he is late to his appointment with a coroner.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
This is the exact opposite of what they've done on the main street through my neighborhood. The lights are timed such that you have to speed by about 10 MPH to avoid hitting a bunch of reds.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I'm a local, so I've seen all the news etc. The road in question is 1 lane in each direction. So if you're behind a speeder, he passed you a LONG time ago. So by the time you catch up to the light, it will change again.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Scariest ride in my life was in a taxi going down Broadway in NYC. After mentioning that he hadn't slept in 48 hrs, driver says that when you drive faster than everyone else you don't have to look when changing lanes. No wait! The scariest ride was in the army hitching a ride on the mail truck back to the field. The driver was a speed freak (methamphetamine) who called himself "Kowalski" and was always trying to beat his personal best time. I had seen the movie Vanishing Point. Now, I was in it!
... then they need to synchronize ALL the lights on a road in a series so that driving at a certain speed will result in the drivers getting all green lights.
Anyone will slow down if they can reliably avoid repeated stop/start cycles. Even when some people don't know about it, the preponderance of those that do generaly makes the traffic flow just fine. I've seen this work in NYC and it is just great.
I second the observations of other posters who noted the problems of this 'punish the speeder' scheme, e.g., creating UNpredictability which increases the risk of accidents, of punishing non-speeders who happen to be near the speeders, etc.
Just because technology allows us to do something new, doesn't mead we should do it every time!
I speed up to make the lights,
now the lights are speeding up their grn-yellow-red
cycles...
so I have to speed up even more to make them..
hmmm - why does it seem like the cocaine ads..
take more coke to work harder, work harder to
make more money, need more money to buy more coke,
take more coke to...
The purpose of speed limits has changed a number of times over the years; this may be a sign of things taking a step back. Previous modes went like this:
- safety - When speed limits were first introduced, they were purely about safety. Citizens were "encouraged" to follow the speed limit be having clearly marked police cars setting an example by driving in traffic at the limit. This mode ened before most of us were born.
- enforcement - This is the mode which most of us are familiar with; police vehicles, hidden or unmarked, monitor speeds without participating in traffic. The focus has shifted from encouraging to punishing. Sometimes this is even motivated by external factors like...
- revenue - Connect a camera to radar gun, throw it into a mirror windowed van, or mount it on the lights at a busy intersection, and you have a way to increase taxes by extorting the owner of the offending vehicle without actually doing anything immediate enough to discourage the bad behaviour.
So now we have a new mode that seems, in theory, to actually provide an immediate negative feedback for bad behavior. Perhaps this new mode is a step back towards safety, forcing drivers to slow down.Too bad it won't do anything to change the offending behavior.
I used to work in downtown Denver. When I ended up on night shift, I discovered something interesting; driving south from downtown on Broadway (a major arterial with lights at every intersection), I could drive all the way to the I-25 intersection (about 3.5 miles away) catching every light green. It seems that the city's traffic engineers had timed the lights. Driving at the speed limit from downtown to 6th, then speed limit +3 from 6th to Bayaud, then the speed limit for the rest, I would approach each intersection with the light just turning green. A similar result could be accomplished on northbound Lincoln (going from I-25 to downtown). But, when I tried to do this during the day (when other cars were on the road), my efforts were constantly thwarted by the countless feebs who would rocket out of the intersection on green, accelerate past the speed limit, then slam on the brakes at the next light at the end of the block, over and over and over and over again. The only way this new scheme will have any impact with people like that is if there is something, along with the change to red, that indicates why the change happened. Like a big display flashing a picture of the offender with a blinking red banner, "This unnecessary stop was brought to you by this here impatient jerk!" Public shaming as a motivational tool... Hmm.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Never mind that by lengthening the yellow they could eliminate running stoplights almost entirely
I don't know what utopia you live in where the majority of people are so courteous to share the road with the rest of soceity, but if you couls post it here I'd be much appreciated.
Longer yellow lights equates to longer periods of time where people will floor it to get through the intersection so they can save a few measely seconds, typically so they can go fast enough to catch the NEXT red light down the street.
I won't even go into the "fuck the rest of you, its MY road, and I have to get somewhere" attitude most drivers have in this post, because you all know about it already.
s'wut i sed.
Without stopping? Now admittedly, I have no idea what the actual state of California law, but while I was in Folsom, I had several residents tell me that it was legal in California to turn right on red without stopping first, so long as you checked for incoming traffic. Honestly, I suspect they were either misinformed or cracking a joke about how bad drivers in California are.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Check out what's going on Belgium: Radar clocks Mini at Mach 3 speed
Flying along like a supersonic aircraft A Belgian motorist was left stunned after authorities sent him a speeding ticket for travelling in his Mini at three times the speed of sound.
Read the BBC Article
In theory, this sounds like a nice enough idea. But in practice, I think many speed limits are absurdly low, and are (rightly) routinely ignored.
If a system like this were to be implemented, and not cause mass grousing by normal drivers, then it would be necessary to couple it with a program to determine what the "in practice" speed limits are, and change the speed limits accordingly.
In other words, if the goal is to affect just the 10% of really-bad speeders, then that's fine. But if you affect a much greater % than that, the program won't be sustainable! (and rightly so!)
I'm sure there would never _be_ an effort to reform speed limits to reflect on-the-ground reality. Therefore, I think the program's a bad idea -- something I'll be grousing about if it's ever implemented around here.
The question presumes an answer to the question of whether it safe to flout posted speed limits just because you are running late, michael.
Karma be damned...I *want* to stop morons who think blowing by at +25 MPH relative to other traffic when the urge strikes is their god-given right. Bring it on, please!
just think this problem could be avoided if we increased the speed limit? I don't know about you, but I really don't think we all need to drive 35mph on a 4 lane road with no houses on it...yet there are plenty of those around. 55 on a highway? In nebraska it's 80. Then again, Chicago traffic sucks and there are plenty of soccer mom's in the 'burbs, so maybe I'm just bitter.
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
I guess this means that lights that are timed for 35 MPH won't be timed for 70 MPH anymore.
The driver accelerates so the red light will look green to him because of the doppler effect.
(computing the required speed is left as an execise for the reader.)
sig intentionally left blank
I just know some PHB in some state highway division is having visions of entire highways full of traffic lights to cut state trooper labor.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
rather, Can i drive so freakin fast that it turns from red to blue?
I remember a small town that we went through in the 1970s. They didn't have speed limits at all. But they had signs that said, "Traffic lights synchronized for 25 MPH". As soon as you figured out that the signs were telling the truth, you drove 25. If you didn't, you hit every single light red.
I hope I'm not the only one who checks to see that the traffic has truly stopped before going through a green. It's saved me from getting broadsided a few times. I can't see this being a Good Thing(TM).
So, what's it going to do to recognize when, say, an ambulance, a firetruck, a cop car responding to a call, etc., are speeding up to pass through the intersection on their way to an emergency?
Yes, I know, they already "run" red lights to respond to emergencies, but they are slowed down by virtue of pulling to the intersection, making sure other vehicles have recognized that they're about to pass through and then continuing towards the emergency.
Still, do we need to complicate the jobs of first-responders by making sure every stop-light between them and someone in need of immediate assistance will turn RED?
it's a race condition
If we're going to have a speed limit then let's do everything possible to make it work. It's really unfair to me, a law-abiding driver, to see somebody go 10 mph over the limit and then watch him hit all the green lights because he's speeding. I mean REALLY! So let's show him a red light and then fine them big time.
Otherwise let's just get rid of the speed limit and start to make cars that drive themself. Then everybody could go 200 mph and we'd have far fewer accidents. Seriously!
They have had these for a LONG time in my home town. They don't work, the speeders end up either running the red light, or gunning it and making through the yellow. The end result? Speeders pass, and everyone else is punished.
Things like this are a Good Idea(tm) in theory, but when put into practice fall quite short of the mark.
Additionally, their triggers are often set to unreasonable levels, such as 5 miles over the speed limit, which can easily happen due to sensor differences and upward drift of speed in between glances.
it doesn't work since everybody speeds cancelling out th other direction. Also, if you're going fast enough, you can easily make it even before it turns red.
i drive alot, and have seen a lot.
imn my experiance speed is not really a safty issue. speed however does compond the effects of the stupid thing that causes the problem.
tailgateing, weaving in and out of traffic, underestimateing effects of the weather/snow and running red lights are all made worse at high speed.
on a dry road, low wind and no trafic, speed wont be a huge problem by itself
Most metropolitan areas employ progressive traffic signals in that the greens will light up slowly along a major artery in a row facilitating the flow of traffic.
If we start changing signal patterns during rush-hour in major areas because some jackass was speeding, we are going to severly tie up traffic.
Anyone here in the US drive in VA near or around DC or in a major city such as Chicago? Its all they can do to get traffic to flow to begin with.
To me, law enforcement has to do with punishing the offender, not everyone else who needs to get to work in a reasonable amount of time who is stuck next to or behind said offender.
This smells of typical American justice where we implement laws and enformcent to deal with a few idiotic people in the minority, inconveniencing or otherwise limiting those of us who normally follow the law and dont need to be baby-sat our entire lives.
We have speed-triggered traficlights on a lot of places, typically on places with one-lonely light on a 70kmh road. ;). So when you get close to those lights, there is no point in going to fast - you know that will force you to stop, so you just slow down to legal speed ;)
The only differense is that they idle red 4-ways, as soon as somebody comes close, a sensor notices it. After the time legal speed would require, it goes green (unless crossing trafic is in a green of course
Not new at all- the major avenues in Manhattan use this system.
This seems like a good idea, but it's not going to be widely adapted. It doesn't meet the real purpose of speed laws and speed enforcement, which is increasing city and state revenues. You may argue that it's a public safety matter, but that's really a secondary consideration when it comes to enforcing traffic laws.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Kilgore my good man,
I do not see why your post was modded troll. It was a great and noble effort. Do not despair. Slashdot wubs yew. This modding was just tough love. Keep your fabulous chin raised high, and watch out for stop lights when speeding.
Good day,
Habermaster J. Wentmaggot
Neil, you couldn't speak more truth. I used to live in the same area and those lights were timeed impeccably, and people STILL wouldn't get the point. Speeding through that area would actually TAKE LONGER than sticking close to the posted limit. Especially if their driving like an asshole caused an accident, which was pretty much a daily happening.
The picture/banner idea would not only be brilliant, but create a whole slew of jobs in the Jumbotron industry to build and maintain the displays, as well as improve design to ward off the inevitable attempts to destroy them.
s'wut i sed.
especially Germany, this is fairly common....
In Portugal they have these very annoying devices. You are doing 90 (kilometers per hour) and then you have some small village or other, where the speed limit is 50. And if you fail to slow down in time, this thing goes red on you. Annoying as hell, but it was effective.
At least against me.
I estimate there are tens or hundreds of these in use in Portugal and in Spain. They don't have a yellow light, they go from green to red immediately.
-- Arik
I have noticed several city streets (in various states where I have lived) with lots of traffic lights where going the speed limit gets you just barely caught by _every_one_. If you go about 5mph over the speed limit, you eventually get caught. If you go about 10-15mph over the speed limit, you can cruise through all of them green. Guess what speed I drove that street.
Whoever set up that speed limit and those traffic light timings was either an idiot, or they were planning to earn a lot of revenue through speed traps.
They should stop rewarding speeding with traffic lights like this before they put in the effort to punish it through traffic lights.
This would destroy timed light sequences. Now you have to figure out where the sensor picks you up, slam on the brakes to pass through the sensor and then gun it to get back up to your original speed. What happens when everybody speeds, does the light just go red in all directions? I'm pissed already. btw, I already sit in traffic 4 hours a day to go 26 miles. I'd much rather see a serious approach to promoting telecommuting instead of creating more gridlock.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
1. Remove all drivers side front airbags and seatbelts.
2. Weld a 6" steel spike in the center of the steering wheel.
3. Sit back and watch everyone drive really carefully.
4. Profit!
The less time people spend in the car, the more they spend doing productive things. Speeding keeps people from spending valuable hours in their cars, not earning or spending any money. It's good for the economy!
The problem isn't that a few people speed, it's that everyone speeds, all the time. When you drive the speed limit, people honk and bitch and, rarely, shoot at you. People feel the need to go fast because their cars are grossly overpowered, for the most part, and they're either in a hurry or already late and the traffic system is already overloaded, meaning any chance you have to speed should be taken because you'll be sitting in traffic otherwise.
And I'd just like to remind everyone, nobody speeds on public rail, except where they're supposed to.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
However, I agree that this may also just be a tactic to collect more taxes in the form of fines. Now a cop posted at the light can collect the speeding fine and the running a red light fine if they time the light change just right...
Eat at Joe's.
Does stopping speeders before others serve a purpose other than petty revenge?
Better than that a ticket in the mail.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Dunno, my first idea was traffic lights zapping speeders with red lasers of death...now that might be amusing to watch.
frotz grue
Let's crack down on hyper-aggressive idiots tailgating people with their SUVs. There is absolutely nothing unsafe about travelling in excess of the posted speed limit on most roads. These limits are usually set excessively low in order to generate revenue from "speeders". Speed limits need to be raised a LOT from what they are currently in most areas. But the crime should be failing to control your vehicle and causing an unsafe condition. This would certainly include idiots who feel compelled to drive SUVs and bully other drivers on the road by tailgating them, based on the faulty assumption that if there is an accident, the SUV driver will survive while the person in the vehicle they run over will be killed. These people should be charged with attempted murder when they are caught tailgating, and should be charged with murder when they kill someone. Furthermore, to discourage this reckless, violent behavior, SUVs should require a CDL or special truck license with extensive certification and testing, plus additional license fees. These people are a danger and a menace to society, and should be dealt with accordingly.
I look forward to making your 45 minute commute into an hour and a half teeth gnasher.
You'll know me by the visible laughter, and middle finger. Oh, and the 'R' sticker I got from my cousin.
So a speeder is supposed to be challenged by a red light. Open question to the designers of this system: "What is the speed of light in the little universe you are living in?"
You want to stop people from running red lights (and with these lights by extension speeding)?
Put retractable "Severe tire damage" spikes on the entrances to the intersection. Raise them on the directions for which the light is red. Couple the system to a SECURE RF system for emergency vehicles to lower them. Thus the only way a scofflaw can enter the intersection in these cases would be to veer to the other side of the road where the spikes are not facing the correct direction.
Extra points for putting spikes in the media to prevent that.
Teach people that YELLOW means "Stop if at all possible DAMNIT!" and RED means "STOP. No option. STOP. NOW!"
The great thing about this is that you need issue no fine to punish the bad drivers - the cost of replacing their tires will do that nicely.
Of course, I want to mount a land-mine dropper to drop mines with a two second delay behind me - that should teach people what "safe following distance" is (Fire the mine out at rest relative to the road surface, "One Mississippi, Two Mississipp-BANG!").
Seriously - stop people from needlessly tailgating, running yellow and red lights, and I think you could actually RAISE the speed limits in many areas without a reduction in safety.
www.eFax.com are spammers
What you have presented us is just a case study on survival of the fittest - or, more accurately in this case - death of the dumbest.
You people suck, grow some balls, the US speed limits are so low it is INSANE. THIS is fascism at work my friends.
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
If you're going over 25 (it's a residential area), the light turns to red.
I like this much better than the speeding cameras that we also have in this area that send you a photo of your speeding car with a ticket a month after it happens. How can you defend yourself against that? Do you know how fast you were driving a month ago, or even if it was you driving? I'm surprised that these cameras haven't been successfully challenged in court-- you can't defend yourself against them because you aren't even aware when the ticket is issued.
I want this on my street. It should also trigger red-light cams when the miscreants run the light anyway. Of course it should be set to the normal fair 10-20% overage for street speed limits, but such a system would be most welcome in my neighborhood.
As for people in real emergencies that actually have a reason to speed, they can go to court and explain it to a judge.
As a moron teenager, I used to think speed limits were stupid, but I've grown up a bit. First, driving is stupid. If you like driving fast, go to a track and really have fun (or better yet, end the highway subsidy system, build high speed rail, and turn the surviving freeways into FunZones where people can race as much as they want).
But in my neighborhood people drive absurdly fast. They crash into people's houses, they regularly wreck parked cars, and once, not far from here, they killed a little girl on her way home from school, pinning her against a building.
They installed a few traffic cams, but at least one moron drove by so quickly that the picture was too blurry to be useful, and pinned the detector at 100mph. On a city street.
Unfortunately, some nervious teamsters fought the legality and got them removed.
I hate survailence as a rule, and think there should be a constitutional amendment that says "No law shall regulate the private behavior of consenting adults." But driving is public, and speeding puts everyone's lives at risk. For most non-smokers, the only mode of death they should rationally worry about is due to driving.
Personally I wanted to put those pop up barriers they use at protected facilites that can stop a speeding 18w wheeler cold - they're giant concrete barriers on hydraulics that pop up when a guard presses a button. If they were on an automatic system, and they just popped up, maybe just barely within stopping distance of a speeding car... well evolution would take care of the rest...
of course other regions might not warrant such solutions....
And the light stays red if you are suspected of being a terrorist.
... when all the other drivers get out of their cars and beat the speeder senseless, for causing the light to turn.
Right now, speed laws are enforced using speeding tickets. With these traffic lights, the law is enforced using the threat of accident from going through a red light.
The deaths of pedestrians, other motorists and yourself will be the price paid for slowing traffic down. What happens if the road is wet or icy, and the stopping distance increases? By allowing the other traffic to go through the intersection in front of any speeding cars, you are virtually GUARANTEEING an accident. Average speed will go down, but the number of deaths by accident, and the multimillion dollar lawsuits will go way up.
Great thinking guys! What other inventions have you made lately? Candle flame gas leak detectors?
Why not roundabouts? we use them here Vail and they really move the traffic while also slowing it down through the movable intersections
because, after all, speeders don't run red lights...
Chris Mattern
I think that's a better plan. I don't know how effective it was in general but I always tried to go by the sign when on that route and it seemed to work out well.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
If a driver is already "in a hurry" and speeding faster than much of the traffic, what on earth would make them say "ooh, the light turned yellow so I'd better stop at this intersection". Most speeders I know would just accelerate more to "beat the red light".
Safety-wise -- the only way this would be safe is if no other light change until the speeder either stops fully or exits the intersection (having run the light). If drivers in the other direction are given an early green, that would be a recipe for disaster.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
That so many think this is a 'good idea'.
Just goes to show that most people here don't drive, or if they do, drive poorly.
Yeah sure you may be made late by a speeder.. on the other hand you may get a bonus green light from a speeder on the intersecting road.
I can also see this system training people to apply a burst of speed once they get to a certain point before the intersection, after the timing of the light has subconciously set in to the brain.
If I recall correctly, it is a violation of Federal Highway Administration regulations to use traffic signals to control speeds (iow, in the Boston area all those "signals timed to require frequent stops" locations are illegal).
Signal setups and timings are based on traffic flow studies and require approval. To arbitrarily change timings like that may also be a violation if minimum flow and lead times are not maintained (ie, the same methodology used by sensor-triggered signals).
Actually, this sounds kind of like something that was pulled in St. Louis a few years back...A police officer got a hold of a button that would change a light quickly from green to red when he saw a motorist approaching. They wouldn't have time to stop, and he would pull them over and give them a ticket for running the light. Made the news and everything. The courts quickly ruled it illegal. Is it much different when a computer does it instead of a cop? And although they're not handing out fines yet...
Higher speed limits haven't increased deaths because speeds have not increased significantly on the highways. People were already driving well over the posted limits even when we had 55 mph limits. The 55 mph speed limit law was probably the most disobeyed law in American history.
But I'm having a dark vision of some poor soul beeing called a speeder, having the light change, and then losing control of their vehicle when they suddenly hit the brakes. Yeah you could pin the blame on them for going so fast that they tripped the lights but they would argue then that the light shouldn't have changed and doing so caused a distraction. I just hope noone get's killed in an accident like that.
And while we're on the subject of negative reinforcement. Suppose I'm just driving my merry way and some "speeder" comes up in the lane next to me tripping the light. Suppose I suddenly stop and get rear-ended by a third person. Whose fault is it? Mine, The third person, The speeder, or the engineers who made the damn light.
Now technology proposes to eliminate this source of revenue too? What the hell is wrong with these people, are they a bunch of communists?!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Drive the speed limit until you are within 7 seconds of the light, then floor the gas. Works best with supercharged or big block engines. I wish my car had more than 90 horsepower.
More music, fewer hits
you get two speeders approaching an intersection at the same time?
Do you get a blue light of death!?
Dulles Toll Road. HOV-2 in leftmost lane.
If the HOV lane is backed up, 90% of the time it's for one of two reasons: accident rare, or that cops are enforcing HOV restrictions.
What a load of good that does.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
most speeders I see tend to run the yellow light by flooring it as soon as it turns yellow. I would think this would increase speed!
Have it hold the green for the other direction, until there's no one going at a speed where they can't stop anymore--have bother directions red. Just in case someone figures this out, install a red-light camera and start giving out tickets to people who go through the red light regardless because they know the other direction will not get a green.
You know the one I mean... it turns red if you go too fast. I was going to say, "This is News?" when I read the article.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Given the assumption that it is OK to have machines punish people, we can easily conceive of more effective punishments.
I believe it would be fairly easy to implement automatic sniper rifles to punish a wide variety of traffic offenses.
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
For gods sake Americans love affair with automobiles rests on the pure unbridled power they are allowed to exercise at their own descretion every morning when they go to work.
Road rage is cause by red lights and traffic jams since it takes away this power.
Pretty simple really. I get a rush flying down the highway a little faster than the speed limit signs state.
In an otherwise growing controlled society were we all follow the rules driving can be quite rewarding.
Heh ... I just tripped that light going to lunch today.
small world.
Obsession often times is the sign of sexual attraction. We usually grow out of this childish means of getting attention when we become adults. Might I reccomend you download a pic and to masturbate to your heart's content. It would after all be a better means to vent your frustration.
They deserve whatever they get.
sulli
RTFJ.
At least for my city, which has the nickname Stoplight City. I swear we've got lights at every damn intersection in town.
'Course with Mrs. Knuckles in front of me most of the time my speed never goes over 25, regardless of the posted limit!
Aych tea tea pea colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash
Herndon Parkway is useless now. There's this Worldgate drive which cuts between Monroe and Elden street, everyone uses that instead.
:-(
Of course, I got a speeding ticket on that.
Figures.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Im not one either but structural engineering students take general civil classes heres the jist from my traffic intro class.
Intersection Design is based first on delay time. This is because it is what people notice. Green time is thus based on traffic flow conditions.
The goal is to minimize delay time while maximizing flow.
Yellow light duration is based on intersection geometry. It is dominated by the clearence time for a car to clear the intersection. The goal is to minimize the dilemma zone the stretch of pavement where in you could make the light or stop. The less dilemma there is the better.
Another major factor that determines yellow time is pedestrian clearence needs. IF you optimally want to have a 30 second green and a 5 second yellow but the intersection needs 40 seconds for a pedestrian to clear you have to extend the phase for the pedestrian. so your green time would have to go up and throw off the rest of your phasing.
Most timing computers in cities have the ability to do on the fly phasing changes like for event traffic. But the cities have outlayed the cash for the units but not for the programming of them so most have only a morning rush evening rush and normal timing scheme.
I dont know how other states do speed limits but in Ohio speed limits are statutory in that for each kind of road (rural, business frontage, residential). The speed limit is dictated by the surrounding landscape. If a municilpality lowers the limit or installs a traffic control device like a stop sign they must have traffic engineer due a study to prove necessity. So go to your council meetings and ask for the speed study for that non-statutory 25 zone on and if they dont have it its illegal! (IANAL but you can use that in court too)
1- "hmm ... maybe i'm being unsafe to my fellow citizen and this radared red light is only warning me that i am a potential danger! I should slow down so as to no longer endanger the lives of my fellow, taxpaying citizen! i'll just be late to my meeting and the boss will have to wait"
2- "GODAM@#$*(@# STOOPID @#$*()@*@# LIGHT GONNA GET ME LATE TO THE MEETING !!!!! COMON YOU STOO@()#*$(*@ B*TCH GO GREEN ALLREADY COMON!!!!!!"
Like it not not, rightfull or not, this isn't gonna help anything.
-- If you actually say LOL instead of laughing, maybe it's time to go outside! --
cheap is often not the issue. i was in germany and there a lot of people still have manuals. why? because the engine has to have a certain minimum amount of power to not stall with an automatic. this is around 100hp. the ford mondeo (at least when i saw it) was about 80hp.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
because now they can write TWO tickets, one for speeding, and another one for running the red light.
The city will love this because they collect more money from fines.
The laywers will love this because they will have more clients who will pay more to try and get out of two moving violations instead of just one.
Great idea!
Drunk driving? Go for it, but stay in your lane and don't wreck. Kill someone, and you get a minimum of 3rd-degree murder. I'd guess that'd be about 30-50 years in prison.
In Florida (USA), any major injury ocurring during a crash will cause anyone (not necessarilly the person at fault) DUI to receive a mandatory 5 year state prison term. And, no, it doesn't matter if you/they are to blame. And, no, the setence is a hard-bottom one (can't buy yourself out) with a max of 15 years (iirc).
Before all of the applauding, realize too that a DUI in this state is not limited to alcohol. Any illegal drug (kinda obvious), prescription drug which affects the senses (not as obvious), or most cold medicines (didn't see that one comming eh?) qualify.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
"Stay green stay green staaaaay greeee" BZZZZZZT
Oh, the light turns red... Not the same kind of punishment I guess...
I live in Northern Virginia, and there's a town not far from here that has several traffic signals that turn red for speeders. I'm not sure how long the light has been around, but it's been at least the 3 years I've lived here. Several warning signs are posted, but I have to say that I've never seen the light change red other than when a car pulls up to the intersection. Either the threshold is very high (10+ mph over speed limit) or maybe it's only a ruse??
This has been working in Portugal for at least 10 years (along with EZpass). The trick is that the lights turn red well ahead of the speeding car. There is no way to run a yellow light, because your speeding probably stopped traffic ahead of you too.
Once people understood it, speeding stopped and traffic-flow improved. Chronic speeders figured out that they can't beat the system and they started obeying the traffic laws to get to places faster.
They can do this right after they go back to letting engineers set the limits. Way back before cities funded themselves with traffic violations, the limits were set by city engineers doing crazy things like site surveys, traffic monitoring and other such scientific mumbo-jumbo.
> cars are grossly overpowered
no... speed limits simply haven't kept up. sure, back in the day 35mph made sense in a lot of places. cars travelling faster than that were dangerous. today those same roads can be safely navigated at 45 or 50 mph thanks to improved vehicle technology.
as for the problem being that everyone speeds.. i think that's looking at it completely backwards. If everyone were driving the same speed, roadways would be a far safer place, even if that speed were 10 or 20mph over the posted limits. a river with a flat bed flows smoothly. random rocks jutting to the surface disrupt that smoothness. would you rather take a canoe down a smooth flowing river, or one with violent rapids?
drivers will always drive at whatever speed they feel appropriate. when you take that into account, it's only logical to adapt to those speeds so the roadways will be a safer place for all.
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
I bet if I drive even faster, I'll be able to make it through the light! Seriously, this is news? They've had speed sensitive lights in northern Virginia for years. And it certainly helps because the traffic there just moves so nicely.
On King Str in Alexandria, VA, there is a sign that warns the stoplight will change to red if you are speeding.
I tested it and it appeared to work as rpomised.
This sounds like a stop light designed by policeman not an engineer. Did they consider the implications of a stop light like this? I think now more red lights will be run, but I could be wrong. what about other alternatives such as speed bumps.
If you use red lights to stop speeders, you using other vehicles to enforce the law. If I get the green light, I'd have to make sure I was being sent into harm's way. A fairer alternative is to install a road baricade that raises very quickly when the light turns red - drive through at your own risk then. Of course, you'd have to distribute this picture of what happens if you ignore it.
Interesting thing about drunk driving - it's only a felony if it causes injury, and murder is only in the 2nd degree if it's done during the commission of a felony. Sortof a catch-22.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Something I haven't noticed anybody else pointing out is that this could make all of the surrounding neighborhoods unsafe.
My city -- in the Bay Area -- is laid out on a fairly traditional grid, so that small residential streets run parallel to the main four-land roads. Whenever the cops are out ticketing speeders there or there's a commute-time wait at the stop signs & signals, drivers use the parallel residential streets like mine as a detour. That means that we often wind up with jackasses doing 40 - 60mph on a street designed for half that -- endangering and periodically hitting people or pets. The noise (between the various micro-dicked guys with booming bass or intentionally-roaring engines) is also incredibly obnoxious.
All making the lights go red is likely to do is teach drivers to route around them, so instead of people doing 40 on a road designed for 35, they wind up doing 50 (to "make up for lost time") on a street meant for 25. Makes life nicer for people on the main avenue, but it's dangerous and annoying for the rest of us.
because of their constant ticketing practices.
They are the same people that decided to go into bars and arrest patrons for public drunkeness last year.
They are just hungry for the public's money, they will give you a summons for anything.
This is a good idea, much like the photographic tickets, but it just doesn't quite do the job.
Proposal One:
People who speed excessively not only get points and fines, but more creative punishments, such as bumper stickers that say I'm an asshole that thinks they are more important that the safety of those sharing the vehicle and the road around them. When I exit my vehicle, you may legally kick my ass. (These will have to be fairly large to be read, and will be placed on all sides of the vehicle.) You will also pay for application, maintenance, and eventual removal of these stickers yourself.
Further punishments will be revocation of privelidges to drive vehicles of certain size and/or horsepower. These restrictions are PERMANENT.
"You can't handle the fact that you need to behave yourself when driving your V-6 Jetta Turbo to and from school? Fine, you can now drive a reconditioned Yugo with a governor on the engine for the rest of your life, fucko."
The next step is not suspension of license, but permanent removal.
"Hunh? Need to get to work? Bus passes are $35. Not close to a bus line? Get active with city council and creata more/better public transportation. Yes, we know, we're unfair jerks. Now get a move on or you'll miss your bus."
Proposal Two:
Instead of mucking with traffic lights, we stick to the mobile side-of-the-road speed detectors that we all run into from time to time (The units could also be modified to be mounted semi-permanently above the highway, one per lane, just above informational signs.) These units would need to be refitted, however.
The radar gun is mounted in a turret that allows it to track vehicles and is reworked for a narrower cone of throw to allow it to target a specific vehicle more accurately. Coaxially mounted with this radar gun is a laser to allow for rangefinding and tracking. This technology is currently available.
Also coaxially mounted with the radar gun is an accurate paintball marker, one of those non-lethal rifles that fire rubber bullets, and something similar to the Navy's Sea-Whiz (CWIS) anti-missile system.
When the unit detects a vehicle speeding, it uses its tracking system to get a lock on the vehicle and displays the message: YOU ARE SPEEDING! SLOW IMMEDIATELY OR CORRECTIVE MEASURES WILL BE TAKEN.
(This may necessetate the teaching of hte meaning of these signs to non-english speakers. Or not. Live here, learn the language.)
If the vehicle does not slow down, The unit continues to track it until the vehicle is in close range, then depending on how much the offender is speeding, they either get a paintball shot into their car, or a nice fat high velocity rubber bullet, or in extreme cases; a couple dozen depleted uranium armor piercing rounds.
In the first two cases, when repairing the damage done to the car, the reason for the damage would be obviously seen and fines could be levied by the state through auto body and paint establishments.
In the third case, the best a family could get for an apology is "Look, we're sorry for the death of your loved one, but the fact it this person though themselves more important than soceity and showed so by flagrantly disobeying the laws imposed by it. The only rational corrective measure for someone who chooses to disrupt soceity so flagrantly is to remove them. Don't forget, driving is a priveledge granted by soceity. If you cant follow the rules, your fault. Deal."
An additional feature could be, in cases where no other vehicles are detected, the road spikes up and punctures all of the vehicles tires. If they wreck horribly, they were obviously going TOO FUCKING FAST. Wrecks be pushed off to the side of the road to a safe distance and LEFT THERE PERMANENTLY. The above apology can be given as needed.
Of course, it would only be a matter of time before countermeasure kits would be available for vehicles, though posessing one would result in an extreme ass-beating by the police followed by instant revocation of your license, permanently.
s'wut i sed.
in most of europe (at least many countries, I can't speak for all)
there is a government imposed additional cost to the price of an automatic. There are far fewer households that own autos, and those that do, usually get the most fuel efficient and low weight car they can.
in some countries it is the law that service vehicles (taxis) must be in neutral when not in motion, and turned off when traffic is frozen (slashdotted) for more than 3 minutes.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Boulder, CO has had these for several years. The sensors are well ahead of the light, so you'd have to be doing 100 in a 25 zone to actually make it through the light before it changed.
Boulder likes to punish everyone who isn't walking barefoot in Birkenstocks. But it seems to slow down traffic, and since people know that the signals are speed sensitive, they seem to moderate their speed better. I personally hate it, but it probably works.
Most traffic lights exhibit predictable behavior. On my route to work, I can tell which lights I'll stop at by the first light I encounter. If I make the light without stopping I know which light will be the first to stop me (so long as my speed is relatively constant.) If I stop at the first light, I know that a different light will be the first to stop me. So, knowing that I don't slow down much for lights that I know will be green when I get to them. Or know how much time I have to keep a green. I know I'm not the only person to observe and act upon such behavior. Someone else doing such a thing could end up running the "punishment" red and killing themselves or someone else because for the past n years, its always been green when they get to it... Its nice to know that traffic engineers don't think two steps ahead.
98.862% of drivers out there will never even know this is happeneing, and if they do not know that their speeding is the cause of these red lights, then how will they be 'conditioned' into driving the speed limit.
"shit i'm late for work, i'll speed a little... aww shit a red light..just my luck, now i'll have to go faster!, aww crap another! some luck i have today! i cant believe this"
additionally, you're essentially disrupting the traffic flow of eVERYONE over the actions of one. just one more reason i disagree with it.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
More Orwellian than anything, it will do NOTHING to deter already road-rage fueled Americans from plowing through these intersections and killing you!
I expect this kind of nonsense from Kalifornia however, and since there's too many idiots out there already - I won't cry too hard hearing of their deaths.
because it will take away money from cities. They love speeders. Someone going 70 in a 55 zone is a nice, victimless $200 cash cow for a city.
I'm surprised none of the normal conspiracy theorists have pointed this out yet: This will cause everyone to use more gasoline and cause more pollution. It's not the right answer. If they can detect a speeder approaching an intersection, why not just take a photograph using the same kind of technology that currently issues citations to those who run red lights?
I am tired of arriving at some intersection and stopping at the red light, while nobody is actually crossing the intersection.
Instead of making smarter fining devices, why not build smarter stoplights? One that shows green to real drivers and red to the ghosts, instead of this inefficient fixed-time, last-century design?
Bonus: People will very soon realize that a red signal is surely followed by real perpendicular traffic. These stoplights will be more respected.
Every night people weave, cut people off, pull off into the merge lanes and then cut back in at the last possible moment.
All of these behaviours SLOW traffic down and make everybody later to get home by several minutes each.
So if these light thingys would work in the real world via negative reinforcement how come it doesn't work on the 401?
Instead of turning red, the stoplight should drop small animals in the path of the speeding car. This would be a much more effective punishment.
Because if someone spends 1-2 minutes at a red light, he is going to speed more to make up that time. Which makes him more dangerous than before.
I have thought that everyone should be issued a paintball gun and (say) seven paintballs, and they are to be carried at all times. If you ever see anyone break the law, shoot them with your paintball gun.
Police would then have probable cause to pull over the multi color splat cars with multiple paintball hits, and the you could only paintball refills by going to the DMV and explaining how you used the last seven.
Many people think the problem with this is that people will gang up and splatter a car or a person, but I figure if enough people dislike you that much you're probably somewhat of a tool and chances are you broke the law or otherwise violated someones trust.
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.
I know this was intended as funny, but it wouldn't work anyplace a car stopped at a red should be able to make a right turn...
1. Get the local Harley club interested in using that street often (especially late at night).
2. Have them do 5mph over and rev their bikes repeatedly while waiting at the light (backfire at will!).
3. Watch the residents flock to the mayor and ask him do take the light down.
4. Thank the Harley club!
I see a lot of people saying that all will be well when drivers learn that they'll get slowed down for speeding. You're not taking into account the shear number of idiots that will never learn anything, not to mention the number of new drivers that hit the road everyday. Together these two groups will be plenty to make sure that everyone gets annoyed. Also, to the person who said that if you're close enough to a speeder, then you're speeding too, what if you're actually in front of the speeding car and he's just zooming up on your ass? Never miss an opportunity to just shut up.
Here in Florianopolis (Brazil) we have something much better. We have 5 lights for green and red lights; 5 green, 1 yellow, 5 red. The way it works is that the go in descending order, in other words, when it's on green and its about to go yellow, it goes down the 5 green lights first, then go to the yellow one and red. And the same way for red lights, when it's about to go green it goes down the 5 red lights and then green and so forth...It works very well because the drivers know when it will turn green, yellow and red.
I always figured that lights were timed to set up a certain flow of traffic.
There are spots where I can cruise right along, making green after green and that's good.
There are other spots where I get lots of reds, and traffic slows to a crawl. I understand that city planners will do this in shopping areas and around stores where they are trying to drum up business.
Either way I figure it's better to be going for a planned effect with your traffic light timing rather than letting it get all messed up based on weather people are speeding or not.
Certainly poorly timed lights can make a significant bottleneck, causing traffic to back up. This sort of thing could become a source of real traffic snarls if the local speed limit is set too low. It could even become a feedback loop, as people try to race through that light that never stays green.
And it isn't as if people don't already run lights. Wouldn't it be a legal question
"You are charged for running a red light."
"But it quick-changed after I looked at it b/c I was going 5mph over."
This could maybe cause some question about liablility in traffic light accidents?
Is the lite setup up so all the non-speeders make the light? Why the hell can't they make (the sensors that detect that there is a car in the low traffic direction, and (theoretically) change the light) work? I sit at too many GD lights with not traffic from the busy direction.
Every time. Which sucks. So you learn. Fast
:)
Always speak in complete sentences. Fragments? Never.
I got my driver's license in Louisana in 1973. A school friend offered me a ride home and mentioned that she needed to stop at the Motor Vehicles to get some paperwork.
I thought that I would use the opportunity to get a learner's permit. I filled out the papers and took the eyetest. Then the written test with pictures of the correct answer in order to aid the large number of people in Louisana who can't read.
As soon as I passed the written, the state trooper stood up and said 'Ready to drive?'. I borrowed the keys to my friend's car and very slowly and carefully drove around the block. Thank god it was an automatic transmission.
I thought that I was doing OK until the last stretch of the block which was an expressway. I actually got up to about 45 MPH and then pulled back into the Motor Vehicles lot and cut the engine.
The state trooper started to write something on the form and then just looked at me and said "Girlie, You don't drive worth a piece of shit! You'se lucky you didn't get somebody killed back there! Well, I'm gonna give you your license anyway, but I strongly suggest that you learn how to drive!"
I went in, completed the papers, paid the fees, took the photo, and became a fully registered driver in the great state of Louisana.
When I got home I started laughing and couldn't stop for ten minutes.
I had never driven a car before in my life!
(But I had read a book on it at the library.)
...to make up the time they spent sitting at the red light.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
Of course! Because you're the only one smart enough to realise that it takes time for cars to stop. I'm sure the designers NEVER thought about it. They did not set the distance at which the yellow light activates based on how long it would take to stop. I'm sure it triggers when the car is about 3 feet from the line.
Tilburg (The Netherlands) had a traffic light like this back in 1997. Congratz Slashdot... You only lag 7 years or something...
I totally agree here. This is a great policy. If implemented properly, this will piss off enough speeders to slow down near the intersection (where many accidents happen). The worst speeders are going to have radar detectors anyway so trying to ticket them has become a less than perfect endeavour. What you can't forget in all this is SPEEDING KILLS. I remember when I lived near downtown Jacksonville all the business types with their midlife crisis cars weaving in and out of traffic going 20 over the limit because their being late for something was more important than everyone else's safety.
I have always wondered why on a driving test (which in theory tests your ability to both drive a car and obey traffic laws...) they ask you to back up around a corner?!?
I suspect if I did that anywhere near a police officer at any time other than during a driving test, I would receive a very nice ticket....
I realize this is probably to test your ability to back up, but geez, could we do something that wouldn't get me a ticket in real life?
I dont see why they need to take our money and punish us with it. How about rewarding us.
This could be accomplished with much better results for everyone by simply networking or timing a series of lights. Have the lights work so if you drive the speed limit, you are rewarded by not having to stop at any red lights.
This would mean a much smoother comute for drivers, less wear and tear on vehicles, and greatly increase fuel efficiency.
Obviously the technology is out there, they just don't know how to use it properly. We've gotta love government employees.
I used to work near such a stoplight. :)
People quickly learned not to speed.
This was on a residential road with relatively
low traffic volume thus was less likely to
effect multiple vehicles at once.
The local authorities were trying to prevent
commuters, like myself, from driving dangerously
fast through the residential area with kids etc.
It seemed to have the desried result.
For me it was cheaper than getting a ticket
Which is worse, speeding or running the red light, assuming that people will be fed up with the speed sensing traffic signal?
Here in Portland, Oregon, we have been inundated with photo red light "cops." Nothing is sweeter than receiving a nice photo of you, three views of your car, as you were running that red light.
If you are going to use the speed sensing traffic signal, why not also install these photo red light devices?
That way "everyone" will be happy, the complaining neighbors concerned about speeding through their neighborhoods and the local police department who will still be receiving revenue when the driver says screw it and runs the speed sensing light!
On a personal note, I don't really see a problem with the speed-sensing light given that they are used in populated areas. As a serious speeder, what the heck difference is 35 or 45 in a 25, when you can hop on the freeway and do 120!
I was pulled over in Harlem, GA at 3 am for doing 50 in a 35. I was doing 30. I am not insane; I really was doing 30. And I could have stood on the hood of my car and pissed on a 50 mph sign.
They could just use something like RFID in cars. If you approach a 60MPH speed sign, then your car is told to go no faster than 60mph? Something like that. Why can cars go over 100mph if the maximum speed limit is around maybe 75mph?
Then we can have cars that drive for us and we can sit back and drink, yet not drive. woo!
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
I believe I have made more left turns on red than right turns on red. For a couple years my normal route included a one-way to one-way left turn, and it normally happened that I could make a left turn as soon as I got there, without waiting for the light to change. (3 lane road, and most traffic was in the right lane preparing to turn right a block ahead). Normally and perfectly safe if you know what you are doing.
Personally I think that a red light should only signal you don't have right of way. If you come to a red light and nobody is coming you should be allowed to go (after a full stop) without waiting for the light to change.
From my experience, cops usually take radar in the same spots 95% of the time. When I am speeding and approach one of the known speed-enforced areas (usually a good place for a cop to hide, like behind an overpass), I slow down until I see there are no smokeys there. Then I hit the gas and speed back up again.
If I lived where this detector was, I would speed for the entire length of the road and simply slow down for the tiny range of this speed sensor.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
This has been done 15 to 20 years ago in Southern California, and I don't mean Thousand Oaks. For these lights, it was done with wire loops about a couple hundred feet before the intersection.
The stoplights worked like a charm. Every time there was a speeder on the street it was installed on (and there were many), the light would change from green (to yellow) to red.
But it worked TOO well! The residents ended up hating it because they'd be woken up at all hours of the night hearing cars lock up their brakes and skidding to a stop. There were tire skid marks all over the place leading up to the intersection.
Eventually the residents got the city to disable the 'special feature' of the stoplight. They deemed it safer to let the cars go through unimpeded on a green than cause an unsafe (and irritating) situation where the speeders would need to lock their brakes to stop.
All this will effectively do is add to the stress level of people in general. If someone is speeding to get somewhere and they get stopped by a red light, what happens when it goes green? Well, you're even later now, so you are going to slam the gas as soon as it's green, end up going even faster than you would have.
And the cost? Other than the HUGE FUCKING WASTE OF MONEY (no damn wonder California is bankrupt, they keep wasting money on stupid crap -- tho, I realize this is just SF), you know people will still race (or try harder) to get past a yellow (and end up running a red), while others are waiting to floor it on green -- EVEN BIGGER ACCIDENTS! YAY, more money for Media corporations -- must be a conspiracy.
This is stupid and dangerous, plain and simple. There is no good reason to do it other than imposing the traffic-light-maker's will to employ power over someone else. Many people take perverse pleasure in punishing others for annoying them (even indirectly).
From the story: The signal is a sign of the times. The Bay Area is increasingly consumed with its traffic woes, as seen in a recent fight over neighborhood traffic barriers that divided Palo Alto residents. So an area "consumed with its traffic woes" will fix them by introducing more red lights? By extension, if all the lights were permanently red would all the traffic woes then be magically banished? What does the Governator have to say about this? Will speeding HumVee's be exempt?
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
If that really becomes a problem all they'd have to do is put a camera at the light. If you run it and you are speeding, your insane ticket will stop you from ever doing that again.
There are also quite a few intersections like the following, because it is a triangular city: (each line is a street)
Usually the "island" is a single "cheesewedge" shaped building.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If the guy ahead of you is speeding, he'll get to the light before you will. If the stretch is a proper length, and he's there waiting for 30 seconds, and it takes you 30 seconds to get to the light, you won't even notice the light (barring accidents caused by the speeder, as usual)
And if the speeder keeps speeding and triggering all the lights, you might very well see no lights ever, just because the speeder is tripping the lights for you.
GPL Deconstructed
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs...
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
This system would be very difficult to implement in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic. The government is now studying how to improve them (I work at a firm where it's being studied). Implementing any sort of system where the light changes quickly and spontaneously would make it almost impossible to ensure that pedestrians, elderly & disabled in particular, have enough time to finish crossing.
Unless all the intersection lights are red.
Crazy, crazy driving. Everybody honks, constantly (if you don't other drivers will slam right into you). Highbeams are not for providing illumination, they're for intentionally blinding approaching drivers to make them pull over. Some taxi drivers keep their lights OFF until they want to blind someone.
...Unless of course the approaching vehicle is bigger than you are, in which case they'll force YOU out of the way. In cities, there is sometimes a guy in a booth directing traffic, but he's often ignored if a driver can just "slip through".
You can ALWAYS pass, even if there's no passing lane (there usually isn't), as long as there's space on the shoulder for approaching cars to move over.
It's pretty crazy. And don't EVER take a bus, especially a small one -- the guys driving those are utterly insane, passing on blind hairpin turns along cliff edges, etc.. And they crash all the time.
This might be ok for a small town that wants to stop the Amish from racing horses. Real cities are more interested in smooth traffic flow. If the lights are timed properly, the speeder hits a red light anyway. Messing up the whole grid to stop one lead foot a block earlier is simply for little towns. Or town fathers with little minds.
I drive 30minutes+ everyday. I find the biggest problem on the road is people who are unable to succesfully complete a lane change or turn a corner without coming to a virtual stand still. People who are hesitant when making lane changes, and slow down to extremely slow speeds when making lane changes and turns are the ones that cause T-Bone accidents and fender benders all over the place. I've witnessed 7 accidents as a driver, most at intersections. All were caused by someone hesitating or for example turning out and going extremely slow not giving the driver with the right of way enough time to slow down thus causing a collision. I've also been hit by a drunk driver. Yes, I am a speeder. The fact that I'm confident in how I drive, know my limits and allways drive around or below the speed limit in poor weather does not make me a bad or evil person for speeding on dry pavement with good traction and visibility. Having a light that auto-matically changes when I'm coming up on it and going 10km/h (5m/h) over the speed limit not only puts me at a risk for causing an accident if someone turns left infront of me and the light changes with too little room for me to stop before the light. My personal opinion is that people who are going below the speed limit in good weather, speeding in poor weather or speeding excessively are the ones who should be getting tickets. Going 100km/hr in a posted 80km/hr with plenty of room infront and behind and perfectly dry pavement on a stretch of straight road is not unsafe. Going 60km/h in a posted 80km/h is unsafe and I've witnessed some near high speed collisions from someone traveling at such a reduced speed. If you cannot drive the speedlimit, you are uncomfortable with your driving abilities and you should not be on the road. This obviously doesn't include farm vihicles with flashing lights or signs or any other type of vihicle that is displaying a reduced speed warning.
My $0.02! why should we slow traffic down more? theres allready way to many people driving below the speed limits. If everyone drove the speed limit I would never have to speed, and my trips would allways be the same length as opposed to having to speed for 15minutes and go below the speed limit for 15minutes to make my 30minute trip take 30minutes!@@#$!@
No, this is
Many people lose sight of what it's really about. Safety. The faster you go, the less time you have to react, the more generally unsafe you are.
But I agree, I CAN NOT FOR A FUCKING SECOND stand cops who are unsafe drivers just because they know they aren't going to get ticketed. In Florida, (my hometown to be exact) the cops here are fucking terrible. They abuse their lights and sirens like no other. They'll turn 'em on just to run red lights, then turn 'em back off once they are across the intersection. They will drive in the left lane to turn into shopping centers because they don't want to make a u-turn at the light. They tail gate you like no other, and the second you speed up it's ticket time. Their speeding is appauling. I've seen cops weave lanes like maniacs, just to turn into the Wendy's drive thru.
Instead of looking at the light - I look at the crosswalk signs. They blink only so many times - if I am coming up to a stale green and the crosswalk is blinking red (don't walk), I will typically slow down and stop if I am more than 100-150 feet or so away. If the crosswalk is still "white" (walk), but as I approach it goes blinking - then I know I still have several seconds to get through - a tap or more on the accelerator and I am through.
In the downtown area (where the speed limit is like 25-30 MPH), the crosswalk signals, when they are blinking "don't walk", count down the seconds as well! Very handy in my system (I wish they were all like this).
Now, in some areas this doesn't work well - "don't walk" will pop, but the light will stay green a few seconds longer, so you have to keep both in mind. Other problems are sometimes the "don't walk" is blinking, but then it will go back to "walk" (auto sensing lights that sense when a car on the cross street comes up, starting the timedown, but then the car turns right, so it resets).
Other techniques I use involve judging the traffic - because of all the other lights, and how traffic flows, if there is a red light ahead, I can tell if it is just about to change because of the traffic crossing, and alter my speed prior to getting to the light so I don't have to stop. Works pretty well, except in rush hour traffic.
You want to know the crazy thing about all of this? For some reason, most people don't seem to understand all of this, even though they typically have been driving longer than me (I didn't learn how to drive, nor get a license, until I was 21 - I am 30 now, with three vehicles, go figure). People are idiots...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Get more chance to practise my stoppies up to the line *and* to piss off the car drivers round about me it catches out as well. :)
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
but Herndon, Virginia, has tried them and still has a problem with people blowing through red lights. And then there's the problem for the rest of us, who weren't speeding and get hung on the light anyway.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
As long as you are going to the effort to make the needed changes to the intersection, put in a right turn only lane.
Not only do you then prevent people who are going straight from blocking people who are turning right but you allow for the spikes.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If i'm the only one on a 4 lane street driving home at 2 AM with visibility for hundreds of feet i'll go insane if you make me drive at 35 miles an hour. The speed limits are a somewhat arbitrary line. They have to encompass a variety of conditions and are somewhat of a compromise. That's why (at least in CA) the DMV says no faster than the speed limit or what is safe for the current conditions. I'd be a lot more worried about people going 35 miles an hour during a heavy downpour than someone going 45 on a bright, empty sunday morning.
Photos.
Downtown Jackson Hole, WY (yes the tourist trap part near yellowstone) has an all-walk cycle. And it's across a US Highway. And this also happens to be a place where you have to make a left to follow the highway as well.
As for the red light left, such turns are only legal where both streets (the one you are on and the one you are going to) are one-way. the premis of the permitted left is that you dont' have to cross a through lane of traffic either way. It's actally in most trafic law books in the sections on permitted rights. Denver just puts a sign up to tell you, to ease traffic congestion.
--Shemnon
We have a speeding problem down a major thoroughfare where I live. Instead of a brute-force approach, the police department set up one of those programmable road constructions signs, reminding people of the speed limit, and politely requesting that they slow down. I can say that it at least initially had some effect - the morning traffic has been a lot quieter due to the slower speeds.
In Japan, it is almost unheard of to drive a manual car, even if it's a 600cc microcar. All that's required to prevent stalling with an automatic is a clutch that's adjusted properly so it is disengaged (or slipping very close to it, for easier hill starts) at idle.
There's a light that does this on Pine Street in Boulder, Colorado (near the Pearl Street mall). It has a sign before it that says "Speed Sensitive Light."
:-)
After many commutes past this light I figured out the trick. There's a sweet spot about 50 feet from the light where you come into range of its detector. If you're doing the speed limit at that point, the light will be fine. You can speed back up about 20 feet from the light - it'll change, but you'll get through on the yellow.
I used it once to get rid of a tail gater.
1. 2.
People seem to be missing the point that this traffic signal wasn't installed to enhance safety or discourage speeders. It appears that it was installed to discourage commuters from using this route when the freeways are congested. I suspect that local residents aren't pleased with all the additional traffic and influenced the municipal government to do something about it. It's not uncommon for a municipal government to make changes to prevent traffic from flowing through certain constituents' neighborhoods. I could certainly point out many instances where this is obviously the case. I believe this is a widely accepted practice.
The only purpose of any of the extreme traffic enforcement measures here is revenue generation.
This isn't a random event that popped up out of nowhere. The cops are *very* aggressive about giving out $250 tickets for the most minor infractions. I've never heard of anyone who got off talking to the cop and fighting them in court is useless.
Even if death rates go up, they'll install more of them because ticket rates will also climb.
In Japan, it is almost unheard of to drive a manual car, even if it's a 600cc microcar. All that's required to prevent stalling with an automatic is a clutch that's adjusted properly so it is disengaged (or slipping very close to it, for easier hill starts) at idle.
You're full of shit.
The CVT and hydrostatic transmissions found on microcars get called "automatic transmissions" but they are simple devices for extremely small vehicles and have very little in common with a conventional ATX.
Planetary gearset Automatic transmissions (which is clearly what the parent was talking about) don't use a clutch like you would find on a manual. They use a fluid linkage through a device called a torque converter.
There ARE clutches in most automatic transmissions, but they have nothing in common with the kind found on the input shaft of a manual transmission. They are used for holding and shifting parts of the planetary gearsets around, and once they start slipping the ATX is toast.
When the traffic for whom the light has just changed to green, is speeding? Does the light just flip back and forth allowing only a few cars through each time? Permanently red in both direction?
Um, WTF?
Obviously, if you get a red light because you're speeding towards the intersection, that CANNOT mean that the other side IMMEDIATELY switches to green. That is so obviously a sure recipe for a huge increase in accidents. It is obvious that the other side must wait for a period not too dissimilar from your side just switching to yellow (instead of red).
Regardless, the whole idea seems stupid to me, as if a red light is "punishment". You speed, it is illegal, if a cop is around, you get a ticket, if not, nothing. You cross a red light, it is illegal, if a cop is around, you get a ticket, if not, then nothing. What's the difference ? What's the added "punishment" ? Nothing.
The only thing you have succeeded in doing is increase the chances for accidents and you are relying on the chances of an accident as the deterent for speeding. But it should be anyways. That is a very poor type of law, from a public policy standpoint, depending on safety from accidents to enforce compliance. Easy material for a lawsuit against the government.
Having lived in the Canada/US, I've noticed that traffic is also allowed to make right turns even when the walk sign is at green.
Practices vary by region, but this is true in most intersections. Not just right-on-red (avoiding the pedestrians in front of you), but also turning right OR left at a green light will generally take you through a crosswalk telling people to walk. A driver who is turning is supposed to yield to pedestrians.
This is usually okay -- you are "green" to go straight, but you remember to look if you're turning. It's scarier in places like the T intersection right near my house with a traffic light -- and (picture the T-shape) when you're going up the leg of the T, you get a GREEN light (to go either right or left) at the same time that pedestrians get a walk sign to cross where you're driving!! So you have a green light, but unless you're going straight (into the river) you're supposed to be yielding.
I usually cross at the "Don't Walk" sign, because it's easier to avoid cars that way (and someone going straight is more likely to see ME than someone making a turn).
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
LOL They call that "traffic calming??!" Sounds about as calming as someone randomly dropping rocks onto the roadway from an overpass.
We've had this in South Denver for several years now in an area known as the Denver Tech Center (DTC). If you don't speed you actually stand a better chance of getting through; though some seem to also be on a rather annoying synchronized time delay as well, so that as one turns green and you go, the next one in front of you is turning red (this seems dumb, especially given that in downtown it's the opposite - they are sync'd with the speed limit to turn green as you get to them from the last one - keeps you from speeding and keeps traffic flowing) - but the trick to the timed ones is actually TO speed. It's priority is time not speed at that point.
The speed-sensitive ones do decrease the yellow-red transition time based on how fast you go, however there is a limit on how fast it will transition, just because you need some level of warning that it's changing. That said - if you floor it, you can sometimes get fast enough to make it through before that short transition period expires. Depends on the light and how on top of it you are. I make a little game of it on the way to work usually (especially on the motorcycle, since I can get from 35 to 105 mph in about 3 seconds).
Ahh, fun stuff.
A real motorbike, not a 1950s throwback like a Harley.
0->60 in less than 3 seconds. When you open up even a 600cc bike from a standing start, everything round about you goes into a weird streaky blur like a Star Trek warp drive. Only what's *directly* ahead of you is clear.
Hold the throttle at 6,000, lights change, drop the brake and start feeding the clutch, front wheel lifts, try to keep it below 2 feet, everything blurs, clutch fully out, 70, blip the throttle & kick it up to second still trying to keep the front wheel on the ground as you reach 100.
Motorbikes are real mind altering devices. I don't think human perception is entirely designed to handle speed differentials of more than 25-30mph, when I slow down from 160mph, even 130 feels like I'm crawling along.
Oh, and if my speeding up to a light causes it to switch to red and inconvenience all the car drivers on the road, well, fuck em.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
They are using these on primarily residential streets in Washington DC to slow traffic on these roads down. It's just a light - no intersection - in the middle of a road. It's annoying as hell since the speed limit on the road is 25 (when was the last time you actually DID 25 aside from when you are accelerating?)
Had an office overlooking an exit from a highway. Huge fun each and every day watching them all clog up the intersection.
Traffic lights are there because people can't just be nice and obey basic traffic laws and common courtesy. Like do not drive through a green light if you can see that you are going to have to come to a stop in the middle of the intersection and block everyone else.
Next time you got to stop for a zebra crossing do not curse the traffic lights. Curse every car driver who doesn't stop for a zebra crossing without lights.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It ain't exactly rocketscience is it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There is a speed limit because people can't agree on a single speed. You can set it any speed and there will be people travelling faster and people travelling slower. And it is the difference between the two that is the killer.
This is of course only on highways. Any road where other traffics crosses you also got the problem of seeing other traffic coming.
Try determining when it is safe to cross a F1 race track. There are several proffesionals in graves who failed that test.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
because I just got a $153 speeding ticket for doing 60 in a 40. Lame.
For the cost of each of these auto-timed whatzsamajigits, you could put a speed bump right at the stop line, in every direction. Make it a high enough speed bump that the SUV-lookin', 4x4 jackoffs would even feel it.
Oooh, or better yet: variable height speed bumps! An automated system makes it even with the road when green, then starts raising it a second before yellow... bump is kinda up there while light is yellow... then when the light is red, anyone trying to run the light at greater than 20, 25 mph contributes the contents of his car's undercarriage to the local roadway...
What you can't forget in all this is SPEEDING KILLS. I remember when I lived near downtown Jacksonville all the business types with their midlife crisis cars weaving in and out of traffic going 20 over the limit because their being late for something was more important than everyone else's safety.
You mean reckless driving kills. "Speeding" is exceeding an arbitrary and unchanging limit which has no allowance for road conditions.
Usually the limit is set at a threshold that remains safe for >90% of the time during normal fluctuations in driving conditions and driver ability.
During extreme conditions, traveling at the posted speed *is* unsafe. During good conditions, the posted speed is often substantially lower than the maximum safe speed.
I don't drive faster than what I consider to be a safe speed for current conditions. You should do the same, and forget about speed limits.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
i took a shit on a bitch ass stop light
driving 70 to 80mph on many united states freeways is often safer than driving 55 or 65. researchers in areas where speed limits have been increased have found that in most cases, raising the speed limit 10 or 15mph didnt really effect the speeds at which people generally tended to drive. therefore i dont think the idea of raising speed limits is unjustified.
;)
regarding the idea of a 120mph lane... i would fully support that. i know i'd use it regularly! but it should be clearly marked with some kind of universal paint or signs to keep old doc jones from driving his 76 pickup there at 55mph.
keep in mind i'm thinking autobahns here. give us a 65mph truck lane, an 80mph lane, and an unrestricted lane. and let the police stop people who drive in the wrong ones, or practice less than kosher driving like high-speed tailgating or swerving about... things that can actually be dangerous.
regarding streets and highways.. speed limits in these areas should make sense. right now they dont. or at least there should be dual speeds.. in the winter time, the current speed limits should probably apply. on a sheet of ice, you might need to keep it down to 25 on the straight three mile stretch of road between your house and the nearest highway. but definitely not in the summer when the roads are dry.
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
I think a 1990 AT Geo Metro would prove otherwise. 52hp IIRC.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Call this fucking news?!
I saw this in use in Lisbon about 4 years ago, and thought it was a fantastic idea. None of these dumbass 'Slow down' signs that light up and have no actual effect. It actually _does_ work, and although I am a speeder, I wholeheartedly agree with it.
Old news for American Nerds, Stuff that sort of matters.
probably wont like this, they have the right to speed in california (though generally intended for rural doctors), but not to run red lights.
speaking of which, at some point people might figure out that police in cities dont chase you if you run lights/ignore more than one traffic sign. though sometimes officers forget/ignore the regulations...the liability of the car chase is greater to the police department than the benefit of catching a traffic offender. and most cities have rules against chases
This is hardly news. It's been used in single stand-alone instances for many years. There is, for example, a light at Sunset Boulevard and Marymount Place near UCLA that will turn red if you approach it at faster than about 35-40mph. Marymount Place isn't even really a street-- it's an access road to a side gate for a Catholic school-- so the light's only real purpose is to slow down traffic. As annoying as the concept may seem, it actually works. People figure out that the light turns red if they go too fast, and now people drive slower around there. As far as safety, the lights change with plenty of time for drivers to stop. If you're going so fast that you're depending on predicted behavior of traffic signals, you're driving too damn fast. Besides, we've had adaptive signaling systems in place for DECADES, and that already makes light timing somewhat unpredictable on a moment-by-moment basis.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The kinda person who speeds when aproaching a trafic light is the kinda person who won't stop for a red light.
"It would certainly piss me off if some guy was speeding ahead of me and caused the light ahead of us to turn red, stopping both of us."
Is it a bad sign that the first thing I thought of when reading the summary of this story was "denial-of-service attack"?
Now the NYPD has an entire division of "Traffic Enforcement" officers. These officers are stationed block by block in the densest parts of the city, and immediately ticket parking violations (minimum fine raised recently to $100+). I estimate that the NYPD generates $1000 in ticket revenue per week from traffic to my one building alone. Imagine totaling that amount for the whole city over the course of a year? The drivers haved joked that the NYPD courteously offers the shipping companies an annual flat rate. I can easily see this being the case.
But wait, what does parking have to do with traffic? These same stationary Traffic officers also ticket cars in traffic (Not wearing a seltbelt? Pull over). Turns are strategically prohibted; you can usually see multiple officers policing these profitable locations. I see at least a dozen drivers ticketed in a busy hour.
I suppose these are not scientific results, but they are first-hand observations (a few years of cigarette breaks). Believe them, or not.
===-===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Not to defend unsafe driving, but the reason that nearly everyone speeds is that many speed limits are set so such a low common denominator that you'd assume that brain-damaged chimpanzees were used as the baseline cases. Most people will drive a reasonable speed regardless of what's posted. There are always a few idiots that will drive at insane speeds regardless of what's posted.
...and on that note, in California the authorities have to regularly survey the average traffic speeds in places where they wish to do traffic enforcement and unless you're exceeding average speed by some amount (I believe it's 10%), you are not supposed to be pulled over for speeding. Of course, sometimes you still are, but you can get a ticket dropped in court if you either fall within this margin or they can't produce a recent enough speed survey for the area. I like this, because it prevents most "speed traps", and lets the traffic set the real speed limit (regardless of what the sign says).
However, the higher the speed limit is set, the faster traffic will go, so I think they set the numbers on the signs with some idea of how fast the traffic will actually respond.
Why do people stop at traffic lights at all? It's because they recognise and desire the increase in safety that comes from everyone obeying that particular type of machine. They trust that the light wouldn't stop them unless it were necessary. Misusing traffic lights for enforcement undermines that trust and will lead to enough people who ignore red lights often enough to severely degrade safety.
I've encountered plenty of traffic lights driving in southern Europe whose sole purpose is to annoy "speeders", that is, they are neither at intersections nor pedestrian crossings. If I feel I'm driving safely for the road situation I blithely ignore such lights, after diverting my attention from the road long enough to ensure that there are no police-looking cars around.
A few on the streets have these diaganol crossing things. Apparently this was put in place because the Chinese immigrants would do it anyway (some Chinese cities are setup like that, I guess). Another interesting tidbit, the street signs are written in both English and Chinese.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
In Belgium, such traffic lights already exists. I know a town named Vinderhoute near the city of Ghent where there's a big sign 50m before the traffic lights : 'more than 50kmph = RED LIGHT'.
It actually jumps to red when you're approaching it too fast. This red light has no other goal then slowing down speeders.
Fine for me, but if I'm approaching it at 49kmph and the driver behind is driving just a little too fast I'm being punished for respecting the law.
No shit I was gonna say the same thing. Hey there fellow Boulderite.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
I'm skeptical about the possibility of implementing this safely.
By one approach, you could implement it so that as the light goes red, traffic is started as usual from other directions. But then you run the risk of drivers getting confused by the unexpected change, and skidding through the intersection.
By the other approach, you could implement it so that the light simply turns red and the intersection is dormant for at least a few seconds. But then you run the risk that some selected drivers will learn that they can get away with running the red light without consequence. (Hey, if you could ticket them then you may as well have ticketed them for speeding in the first place, before the red light thing was proposed.) Though they might get away with it here, it could cause serious accidents at other intersections if a driver misunderstands what's going on.
Personally I think that adding an extra semantic meaning behind the reason to stop at a traffic light could create all sorts of new traffic problems.
Don't gripe. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Obey the law and you won't have to worry about this light, or the hundreds of lights across the country that take pictures of red light offenders.
maybe they should setup a system that releases deer when it detects an oncomming speeding car.
Unfortunately, those PETA assholes will probably be all "You can't just catapult an innocent, defenseless doe in front of speeding cars on the interstate..blah blah". Those pussies.
Photo Aspect -- an open, free, J2EE & JBoss photoalbu
that would just get me pissed off and when the light turns green I would do a huge burnout and then go faster than I was previously.
You wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
There are always a few idiots that will drive at insane speeds regardless of what's posted.
>>>>>>>>>>>
And they kill a few people doing that. Look, ya maroon, homo sapiens does not operate logically and reasonably on many levels. Males in particular use their vehicles as a social status devices, using them to draw attention to themselves.
So they drive dangerously. It happens a lot. We need to use technology to control homo sapiens. If you don't like it--tough. Get yer sorry ass over to Paraguay, or where ever.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
....I imagined a stop light that pops out :)
a machine gun barrel from one of it's signal
lights and begins firing.
In CA traffic school they tell violators that a traffic light is yellow one second for each ten miles per hour of the speed limit. If the speed limit is 50mph, the light is yellow for 5 seconds.
This gives drivers sufficient time to recognize the light changing and come to a stop. If you're really close to the intersection and see the light change to yellow, you know you have 5 seconds to make it through the light.
This totally blows away the rule of thumb that they teach you.
The stupid assholes who thought this up are playing with peoples lives. Send speeders an auto-ticket, thats OK, but to change the lights quickly while someone is speeding is not fair to anyone. On the good side, at least it is in Ca.
They've had this in virginia at least for quite a while. Travel down King Street near alexandria and there's a set of stop lights near a school that will turn red instantly if you're going past 25mph. Not only that but if they "catch" you, they stay red significantly longer than their normal timing.
How about a KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS law?
I want to mount a land-mine dropper to drop mines with a two second delay behind me - that should teach people what "safe following distance" is
In a 70MPH wouldn't 2 Mississippis mean that you are blowing up someone who is roughly 420 ft behind you? Is your definition of "tailgating" a little more extreme than mine, or are you the guy in the SUV in the passing lane doing under the speed limit?
This has been in place in europe for quite some time. When I was in my home country, Portugal, in 2001 this was already in use even in small towns.
...) north america catching up with europe.
It is good to see (in this case maybe not
Next from the Governator: automatic electric chairs! When they run a known stolen credit card in a California restaurant, the volts delivered to the crook's seat give new meaning to "you want fries with that?" The Governator's next trick: repurposing locally-grown Star Wars tech to catch "deadbeat dads" and "abortion-happy moms".
--
make install -not war
I hope to see lawsuits against the town that approved these lights once the accidents start happening.
Tech Public Policy stuff
limits from the 1970s into unnecessary civilian side impact deaths. Great idea. Someone needs to be jailed for even implementing this idea.
> -Ouote "There is not sufficient evidence in this dataset to reject the hypothesis that crash
:)
> experience changed when posted speed limits were either raised or lowered." Translation - The raising
> or lowering of speed limits did not have any effect on automobile accidents.
NO. That is NOT how the null hypothesis in statistics works.
"There is not sufficient evidence to reject X" means "X may or may not be true; we can't say from this data." It does NOT mean "X is false".
Example: dataset is "Y = 5"; hypothesis is "parent poster is a moron".
There is not sufficient evidence in this dataset to reject the hypothesis that the parent poster is a moron. However, THIS DOES NOT MEAN WE CAN CONCLUDE THE INVERSE! There is ALSO not sufficient evidence in this dataset to _accept_ the hypothesis that the parent poster is a moron.
Fortunately, we have the parent post for that.
> It would't be documented for this "definition" unless it appeared titled so in some study for a
> Masters or Doctorate or in the "Recognized" press of record.
Bullshit.
If there are numbers showing what you claim, point us towards 'em.
Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass, making shit up, and wasting everybody's time.
They were using this near my hometown of Arvada, Colorado at least 6 years ago. It caught me the first time, but every time after that I learned the 10 foot stretch of road that I needed to slow down for.
or else!
Consider the Milhous Nixon Memorial Double-Nickel Speed Limit. Traffic speeds didn't stay low for long after it was enacted. Three decades later we have a generation of drivers who assume that every speed limit is 10-20MPH too low. Interstate, mountain road, residential area--they zip through all of them well over the posted limit, bringing us right back to problem these radar-red-lights are trying to solve. Here we go repeating past mistakes...
It is bad to just suddenly change the lights like this. It will cause injury and death.
Yellow should be yellow for a full 3 seconds.
Most drivers will speed up when a light changes from green to orange, as it is not illegal to go through a orange light but it is illegal to go through a red light. So wouldn't this cause the speeding motorist to speed even more?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
This seems like a great idea where there are traffic lights every 50m. (Actually, no, not really ... it doesn't seem like a good idea at all now that I think about it). However, in my 22km drive to uni every day (I live in Australia), I have to go through exactly 4 lights. And 3 of those in the last 1km of the journey. So with this system I can still speed for most of the way without losing time.
The system we have here, which is much more effective, is sign-posted automatic speed cameras in places where speeding is a serious safety issue. For example, in the centre of town, there are some nightclubs that open out onto a major road near a traffic light. Drunk people often walk out onto the road without a care, and would frequently be run down by speeding motorists until the traffic light got fitted with a speed camera. As a result, anyone who speeds through the light knows that they will get a ticket in the mail (and since there are warning signs as you come up to the light, people tend to just slow down.) It also fines you if you run a red light.
This seems like a much more logical system than wreaking havoc with the lights' shift patterns - if drivers believe they can speed without being caught, simply increase the chance of getting caught for speeding through the light to 100%. Getting where you want to be 3 minutes later may be an effective deterrent, but not as effective as a certain $200 fine (of which you can only get so many before you run out of demerit points and lose your license).
"Why are you watching the washing machine?"
"I love entertainment, as long as it's clean"
BENDER!!!
Seems that this is a real wast of money. Let's invest our time in effort into:
* Stopping the rat-bastards that traffic humans in semi trailers and occasionally forget to let them out to breathe for an extended periiod.
* Fixing scam-o-tron electronic voting machines.
* Perhaps ticketing the idiot driving with a cheesburger in one hand, somking a cigarette with a cell phone in the other hand who is washing it down with a beer.
-- $G
"The punitive nature of the signal on Vineyard appears to have the united support of neighbors and the Police Department, which hasn't seen an unusual number of accidents on the route but envisions a low-cost way to make people feel safe."
Great, people driving at the speed that they're comfortable with, and no unusual amount of accidents. Now the town is going to create a way to slow down drivers so that people can "feel" safe. Waste of time and money. If there were a lot of accidents caused by excessive speed, this would make sense.
--murph
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
In my city the lights are aligned to the speed of the road. Once you've waited once for a light, you don't have to stop until you get off that road. It also means that if you speed a little, you don't save any time (unless you run red lights) by speeding because you have to wait for the light.
1. Will cost extra money to implement.
2. Traffic lights will NEVER been in sync, so more chances for grid-lock in a city durring rush hour. (unless the turn on this "feature" on after hours in less times of traffic"
3. Increase in road rage = higher crime rate. Also, increase in accidents.
4. Constant stop-and-go traffic will cause more local smog polution. Also, will increase needed car maintnence and consume more oil overall.
5. Want to race at a red light? Lets just piss of the neighbors while were at it (covered under point 2). At least all the bikers and ricers can "create" a redlight for such an event.
So in the end. THIS IS A COMPLEAT FUCK JOB OF AN IDEA!!!
Life is not for the lazy.
It's a wonder that technology is used to slow us down, while traveling to our destinations.
There should be some state sanctioned technological effort to find something to aid our speed of travel.
I'm glad they're testing this in the Bay Area. I always thought California could use more traffic.
If two cars are heading in opposite directions on a city street, and get into a collision; if they are both heading 30, slam on their breaks, they will each be going about 15-20 when the collision happens. This falls into the 30-40mph collisions cars were designed to sustain with only minor injuries to passengers.
If each car is heading 40, slam on breaks, they are at 30, and thus you have a 60 MPH collision -- which is almost always fatal. Huge difference between 30 and 40 MPH.
Oh, heaven forfend that drivers be expected to pay attention to the road and traffic signals, especially so when they're in a hurry and thus simply have no choice but to violate traffic laws! Gee, officer, I just wasn't expecting that kid to cross the road--and I was in a hurry, so you can hardly blame me for it!
driving 50mph in a 45mph zone does not inhibit a person's ability to see and stop at red lights, use turn signals, or observe other traffic on the road. i watch people every mon-fri run red lights while going 10-15mph(read: NOT SPEEDING) during my commute. there is a reason that speeding and reckless driving infractions each have separate citations.
not everyone that speeds runs red lights and over babies at crosswalks. i can't understand why this is such a difficult concept for you to wrap your mind around.
I think they even tried a "no speed limit" deal on the highways in....Montana IIRC? Turns out the number of highway deaths was decreased. But for some reason the results weren't publicized.
I belong to the ______ generation.
...Southeast, 85 mph, assuming no losses due to friction, etc.
Consider this: My wife is having a baby (or insert any other situation that deathly requires the hospital), and I need to get to the hospital. Now I don't care if the speed limit is 20mph in a school zone, I'm bloody going to drive 80 to get her there.
But now with this system, not only would I end up considerably slowed down, if I tried to run it anyway we'd both end up being hit by another car. Not to mention that they are going to have to implement some system to tell the lights not to do their thing when a cop or ambulence has the right to be speeding.
You know how you can never seem to find a red light to race the other guy at? Just get in front of all the other cars in both lanes, speed, get your red light, and now no one can claim the other "jumped the gun." I love it! ;-)
Here in northern Italy such traffic lights exist since at least 10 years and they are extremely common (there are at least 5 of them along my typical daily commute). What's more important is that we actually try not to trigger them and stop when we do: doing otherwise would be suicidal because you're extremely likely to find a law enforcement guy hiding a few meters down the road. If you go south, things are a bit different. ;)
The rationale for these "new" traffic lights is that if they stop someone because it looks like he was speeding they will have a hard time proving he really was, but ignoring a red light is obvious and by the way it's also a stronger offense here.
People seem to forget that the purpose of driving is to get somewhere, so speed limits etc impede that.
... and it's what everyone does - drive round in a piece of metal, wholly in thier control, fuelled by controlled explosions. Why more people aren't killed I really don't know.
While I can understand this I personally prefer death to safety. I understand that I'm probably outvoted on this, but please remember; limits destroy the point.
Cars are embarrassing anyway, dangerously designed simply because that's what's cheap.
As an 80's kid growing up with moon landing as no big deal, people flying regularly and growing up with computers etc, I WAS AMAZED when I learnt to drive by how dangerous it is
Is this what the world has to offer? This isn't the world I was brought up to be expecting. Surely we can do better than this?
A blog I run for the wealth
Sure, the DESIGNERS set it right in the first place.
The problem is idiot beaurocrats who come up with some 'brialliant' plan to 'solve' the speeding problem by ordering the timings overridden like this to suddenly go yelw red.
Speeder or not, I'd sue the town if I got in an accident because of yellow timings being reduced below safe levels. And the yellow timing is generally set at about the minimum safe timing in the first place.
Initiating a yellow to red cycle is fine, they can do that pretty much any time they like. But messing with the yellow duration is not acceptable.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
How stupid. People who don't use turning signals are a much greater danger. Speed enforcement is much different. Speeding isn't really bad, it just is bad if it gets out of hand. That's what cops are for. This, however, is just ridiculous.
Have you read my journal today?
Eventually I had to lose the bitch for unrelated issues. But that seemed to fix the backseat driving.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent