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Midwest Seeing Red Over 'Green' Traffic Lights
theodp writes "Many municipalities have switched to LED traffic signals because they burn brighter, last longer and use 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs. But they also emit less heat, meaning they sometimes have trouble melting snow, causing problems across the Midwest. In Wisconsin, snow blanketed LED traffic lights in some towns, leading to crashes at intersections where drivers weren't sure whether to stop or go. The unintended consequences of the green technology were also identified as a 'contributing factor' in the death of an Illinois woman hit by a driver who blamed the snow-covered energy-efficient signal for giving the appearance of a normal green light instead of a left-turn signal. 'We can remove the snow with heat, but the cost of doing that in terms of energy use has not brought any enthusiasm from cities and states that buy these signals,' said the CEO of an LED traffic-signal manufacturer. 'They'd like to be able to take away this issue, but they don't want to spend the money and lose the savings.' In the meantime, some towns are addressing sporadic problems by dispatching crews to remove snow or ice from signals using poles, brooms, and heating devices." We were discussing these recently at the office — several folks in the building are red/green color blind and different street lights are differently distinguishable.
Oh that's right... we do! If you get to an intersection and the light isn't working or isn't visible, you treat it like a four-way stop.
idiot driver should be prosecuted since everyone knows the third light from the top is regular green and not a turn signal. i've seen intersections with broken lights before and people are very careful when they go and make sure the other guy is going to yield.
some people are always in a constant state of hurry and can't seem to wait a few seconds
In Wisconsin, snow blanketed LED traffic lights in some towns, leading to crashes at intersections where drivers weren't sure whether to stop or go
If you're not sure to stop or go, the answer is "stop". I can understand if it's dark and you don't see the traffic lights because they're covered with snow, but if the lights at the intersection aren't working, that doesn't mean the light is green. It means stop and go when it's safe to.
Maybe the lights need to take on a new form? What kind of problems would arise from coating each LED's sides with black paint (to replicate the duty of the indirect sun shades) and spacing the LEDs out so snow can pass through them? Or possibly shaping the LED or a cover as a cone shape so that it's harder to cover with snow?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Red/Green colorblindness is nothing new; that's why the lights are standardized to have green at the bottom and red at the top. If you can't distinguish red from green, you can at least distinguish top from bottom. Why is that not a perfectly acceptable solution?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Why would the heaters have to use much energy? It sounds like they're not needed very often. You could automatically trigger them via external light/temperature sensors with some minimal processing or modify the red light camera software to trigger them. The only real downside is massively increasing the complexity of what is currently a very simple device.
A simpler answer might be to train people that they actually need to slow down if a traffic signal is not fully visible.
I live in North Dakota, we've had these LED traffic lights for years, and I cannot remember the last time I saw one totally snowed up. The shields that curve over the top of the traffic lights here do an adequate job of keeping the snow from coating the signals - including during the 3-day blizzard we had last week (I had to drive in it each of those 3 days, so trust me - they worked).
If they're not working in other states, than either their storms are somehow worse than ND's, or they've cheaped out on the snow shields that go over the top of the lights. I know which one I'd put my money on...
why don't they just angle the lenses downwards with less of a hood? problem solved.
I'm going out on a limb here, but you probably don't live somewhere that gets a lot of snow. Don't get me wrong, I think your idea would work in a lot of scenarios but not all of them. Where I live, we get the odd blizzard that puts a thick layer of ice and snow on everything. The wind pushes sticky snow at seemingly impossible angles preventing you from making out any lights or signs.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
I don't think we need more rules, most of them could be relaxed, and relaxed a lot. The only evidence that I need is that, as I said, the majority of drivers relax the rules and drive as such already. I do not believe that it makes sense to set the bar for proper driving above what the average person is actually going to do on the road.
~40K dead Americans per year say you are wrong.
The real problem is NOT the people breaking the rules on purpose. They generally are paying attention, know the rules, and are ready to make adjustments. The problem is the people who either don't know the rules in the first place, or aren't paying attention. There is a HUGE difference between rolling through a stop sign at an empty intersection with unobstructed visibility, and rolling through without even looking because you were playing with your radio.
After 20 years of studying drivers and how accidents happen, I can tell you that you are wrong about them paying attention.
90+% of drivers are operating on autopilot. They are not paying attention and are just letting the autopilot handle everything. This is one reason that they take driving for granted and feel just fine texting or talking on a cell phone while running other drivers off the road. Most crashes happen when 2 inattentive drivers hit each other. If you have an inattentive drive and someone who is actually driving the driver avoids the person who is oblivious to the situation.
Who cares if I only bring my car down to second gear at stop signs? I am ready to stop. If there's another car who has right of way, I stop. If there's no other cars, I am slow enough to stop if I need to because someone else is blowing through, so no safety hazard is caused. If i have enough visibility to roll through at the speed that I am rolling through, and the situation isn't a dangerous one, then... how exactly does the rule make sense?
I care and so does anyone who avoids you hitting them because your "only dropping to 2nd gear for stop lights" becomes part of your autopilot and often you may not actually notice another car has already stopped at the intersection and is now proceeding to use their right of way when you blow the red/stop sign.
I have seen drivers (I hate to use this term for commuters who have somehow ended up behind the wheel and have no interest in teh art of driving) use this same argument and then drive and fail to notice other cars at intersections as they blow lights/signs. They still say that everything was clear and that there was no other traffic due to autopilot.
The advantage of your post is that it clarifies what the person who got killed did wrong. They went through an intersection while assuming other traffic would behave in a given way without even observing the traffic to see if this was likely. I really don't care if you have a green if it looks like an SUV coming up to a red and who will T bone you, is not slowing, don't just say "I have the right of way!" and head to your death. You will be in the right and just as dead as if you were not in the right.
If people cared about highway deaths we'd see a few things.
1. The news would report how many people died in the roads of their state the previous day and across the US.
2. Laws would begin to target bad drivers and not boogiemen like speeders and drunk drivers.
#2 sounds unbelievable so I should explain. When you are just as impaired using a cell phone as you are at the legal BAC level for DWI and only one of these has heavy legal ramifications... yeah, a boogieman has been created. Also if you research the criteria for a drunk driving crash you may be amazed at how a crash with no alcohol can still be classed as a drunk driving crash.
The police say that speed is the #1 cause of crashes. This is wrong. putting things where they do not belong is the #1 cause. If we wanted to reduce raod deaths the police would crack down on people rolling reds and stop signs, people commuting in the wrong lane, improper signal use, and other things which indicate bad drivers. Get the inattentive dummies off the road and watch the death rate plummet.