Slashdot Mirror
MIT Algorithm Predicts Red Light Runners
adeelarshad82 writes "Researchers at MIT have developed an algorithm that determines which drivers will run a red light, within one to two seconds before a potential collision. The research, based on 15,000 cars at a busy intersection, monitored various factors to determine which cars were were likely to run a red light. They found that their predictions were correct about 85 percent of the time, which is about 15-20 percent better than existing traffic prediction algorithms."
Traffic court division!
I got here through a series of tubes
If the car isn't slowing down, it's more likely to run the light.
Deep.
Have you read my blog lately?
One would think that they simply will wait all of the 2 seconds to check that the driver actually runs the red light.
It's not like you can deploy a SWAT team in front of the driver in time to stop him from running the light and never know if he would actually have done it.
I assume it simply selects BMWs?
Is driver on mobile phone? Add 1
Is driver drinking coffee? Add 1
Is driver putting on makeup/shaving/combing hair? Add 1
Is driver having animated (you can see heads turning and arms waving about) discussion with passenger/children? Add 1
Is driver speeding? Add 1
If your score is 3 or higher then expect them to run the light, hope you are not in a crossing lane.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Predict that every car will not run the light. My prediction is correct much more than 85% of the time. Why aren't I in the news?
On the other hand, if everyone is being told to not enter the intersection because someone might run the red light, then you can more safely run red lights.
That's got to count for something....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We slide further down the slope that Huxley warned us about....
Sure, let's stop any applied sociological and psychological research whatsoever because OMG 1984 STALIN HITLER!!!
Not all slopes are slippery.
Does the red get held on the cross street longer ?
That just makes the red-runners life a lot more safer and encourages the behavior.
Does it trigger the 5ton metal barrier at the stop line ?
That make sit safer for the cross street and discourages the behavior. But we don't have the 5ton barriers.
We can't wait that long, city revenues are down again!
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Ah, so that's why my June ski trip to Whistler ended badly.
Haven't you ever heard of the Slippery Slope Conspiracy? It involves a bunch of government agents who scream "Slippery Slope" at the most absurd things so that people will be desensitized to Slippery Slope claims because they will think that the people who make those claims are a bunch of nut-bars! And in another month's time the Slippery Slope Conspirators will have achieved a perfectly zero coefficient of social friction and make the rest of us their true slaves! Not only will we be digging canals with spoons and carrying spoons full of dirt 20 miles up hill both ways and with a 50 lb. steel ball tied to our ankle, but we will be happy for it!
Note to conspiracy-conspiracy theorists: I'm not being serious. Just to be clear, this conspiracy is a figment of my sarcastic imagination and not real.
Congradulations, you just invented the "delayed green". You should patent it, before the guy who has been setting intersections around here up like that for years does. We have them all over the place. Also.... I really wish that articles like this would get beyond things like "see we can do it". I would love to see what it is that predicts these actions, and see if it says anything about whats going on.
Cuz in the end, its not about catching people who run lights. Enforcing the law is not an end in and of itself, its supposed to be a means to an end. Who cares if we can "catch" more people? It may feel good and let someone justify their job with some metrics but, it doesn't solve the original problem of risks and dangers....not in anything even approaching a realistic way.
Like the delayed green... I would think that a very slight delay would cause any such accidents to drop off. In fact, as I said, we have lights timed like this all over the place, and while I have seen a few accidents, the only "red light running" one I know of involved a drunk guy blowing through a light that was just plain red, not even green and turning.... I don't think anything is going to solve that one, there will always be a few true idiots.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The easiest way to reduce red light running is to make yellows longer.
It's more effective than a red light camera, but not nearly as profitable.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Years ago I was sitting at light. The light turns green and the driver in front of me starts going oblivious to the car that's sailing down the road and clearly not intending on stopping for the red. So this guy slams right into the guy in front of me.
This was back when a light would turn green almost immediately after the intersecting street's light would go red. Drivers in my city are notorious for flaunting the rules and generally driving like jerks, but it was rare to have someone go through a red because people were aware of the risk involved.
Then at some point in the past 10-15 years traffic engineers got the idea to delay the interval between one light turning red and the next going green. So now there's a good 2+ second delay where all lights are red.
What has been the side-effect of this change? Now people brazenly blow through red lights. And the thing is that I've seen it happen everywhere, upscale and low-income areas alike. I've seen lines of 3-5 cars keep on going through when the light had clearly gone red. It's so bad sometimes that there are still cars in the intersection after the other light has already turned green, and this is with the aforementioned delay.
But yeah, it's pretty easy to spot the ones who aren't going to stop. They're the ones still moving at a good clip and making no attempt to slow down and stop.
This is why I'm somewhat supportive of stop light cameras. It's not like speed cameras which don't really target the real problem, aggressive or careless driving. Going through a red light poses real danger and is a clear example of reckless driving. Of course, I realize that stop light cameras are abused as well; one popular tactic being to shorten the yellow in order to boost the number of offenders. Otherwise running red lights is a persistent problem I don't really see anyone addressing. Probably because it involves more effort and brings in less revenue than going after speeders.
SLIPPERY SLOPE FALLACY DETECTED.
The only slippery slope fallacy is the claim that when you give government new powers they won't abuse them and extend them to the ultimate limit. Occasionally that's true, but usually only because the powers become obsolete due to technological change, or because voters prevent them from doing so.
And I'm rather amused to see someone with 'Hail Eris' in their sig ranting about EVIL LIBERTARIANS.
...As for the 15% error, did anyone consider cargo?...
THANK YOU!!! As an economic refugee of the "Great Recession", I ended up driving a tractor-trailer for a living - and wound up learning a few things along the way. One interesting fact I've learned is that a fully loaded (80,000 lbs) semi moving at 55 mph can take up to 300 ft to come to a complete stop (think about that next time you want to "brake-check" a truck...). I have, unfortunately, run across traffic lights in which the yellow phase was, for some strange reason, really short- even if the the semi is traveling the legal speed limit. This is not a situation you want to be in: your choices often boil down to:
(1) Stand on the brake in order to not run the impending red light (remember that 300-foot stopping distance? By the time you get stopped, your trailer in squarely in the middle of the intersection. And that's if you don't jackknife and end up wiping out 5 or 6 cars along the way).
(2) Run the light (Yes, it's going to be red by the time you hit it, meaning you will almost certainly incur the wrath of any red-light camera or nearby cop - but see option 1 for the alternative scenario)
This is probably the number two reason I try to avoid surface streets when possible (reason number one being the preponderance of infrastructure not exactly designed with a 75-ft long, nearly 14-ft high vehicle in mind). I figure any traffic engineer worth his salt is going to take these factors into consideration; a failure to do so is going to inevitably invite the occurance of an 18-wheeled clusterfuck and all that comes with it (major property damage, potential loss of life, etc).
This space for rent!
Shit, if you want to fix this problem it's simple. Stop with the cameras and other bullshit.
Have a mechanism that can quickly raise a physical barrier (nice thick steel plate or something) in front of where you're supposed to stop at the red. The barrier lowers when it's green.
Or have a hole that would stop a car just like a ditch, that gets bridged when the light turns green. Now yellow means "prepare to stop" not "punch the gas and hope you don't hit somebody". Problem solved. With that covered, you can then design the lights and the timings between lights to minimize stopping both for travel efficiency and fuel economy.
I also wish they'd put concrete posts every so often wherever there is a double-yellow line. So you bought an SUV and refuse to learn how to handle a vehicle that size? Okay. You get to pay for repairs when you cross the median and strike the concrete posts. Fucking tired of putting my tires in grass because some idiot who hopped on the "must have an SUV" bandwagon decided that being halfway in my lane on a blind curve was his best move. You want to eliminate this kind of idiocy, make it more painful and make the consequences more confined to the person who is the idiot. You think that's harsh? Ever been hit by one of these morons? Getting hit by an SUV is pretty harsh too. Seems proportional to me.
Oh and if you want to fix tailgating, put a spike or a spear on the back of each vehicle pointed downwards from the roof towards the driver's side, right at the height where the windshield of the vehicle behind would be. Suddenly everyone will be more courteous and use a good following distance. Not because they really have any respect for the law or the safety of other drivers, but because being impaled is likely to be a slow lingering death and they will fear it.
If there are going to be so many childish, impatient, stupid people and for some reason we're giving them licenses, might as well recognize what you're dealing with. They don't care that their stupidity might kill someone. They don't care about the measly little fine they might get since for some reason failure to yield (you know that thing that actually causes accidents) is a minor violation like speeding (which doesn't). They don't care that having a cellphone in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other to satiate their fatass appetite is dangerous. So let's quit coddling them since it doesn't work and move on to something they do care about. They do care when there is a certain, immediate, severe consequence. That gets the attention of even the most selfish bastards.
> Have a mechanism that can quickly raise a physical barrier (nice thick steel plate or something) in front of where you're supposed to stop at the red. The barrier lowers when it's green.
From what I've seen where I llive, you don't need anything anywhere near that drastic. People here will slow down to 2 mph and carefully and gingerly make their way over three-inch speed bumps.
So, have *five*-inch mechanical speed bumps at the stop lines, synchronized with the lights. The drivers' brains will explode as they struggle to decide which animal urge to follow, to display their status by blasting through the light, or protect their property by stopping.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
That's a pretty big assumption. The advantage this thing has is that you can outfit the traffic lights to delay the green light while the runner crosses and prevent the problem without instrumenting every car on the road.
And ticket the jackass who might have killed someone.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Unfortunately, while sane, thoughtful people would come to this conclusion, someone, somewhere would rather make a profit off of it. This isn't theoretical, it's already happened, as some cities would rather profit at the expense and injury of motorists. What this does to insurance and medical rates I hate to think.
This sort of thing would be great for "dynamic yellow lights," as you implied. A sane, rational person would use this to make a yellow light last a little longer to prevent an accident. People like the above could widen the range a little and make it shorten the yellow light to catch a few extra bucks. It's not the technology; this algorithm is cool and great. It's the few abusers.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Of course, you are making an error of assumption in assuming that people who run lights generally do it willfully by thought, and not negligently by distraction, or though misjudgment.
Actually, thats one of the few things that I remember from taking the one social psych course that I took.... they called it the "fundamental error of assumption". That is, that people tend to ascribe internal motivations to other people's actions, and external ones to our own. So, you ran the red light because you are impatient and try to cut it as close as you can. I ran the red light because the yellow was excessively short, and you were sitting in the passenger seat talking to me and distracting me.
Sounds ridiculous when you say it like that but, its actually pretty common.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
two and three are all you need.
You can claim you thought you saw a cat/dog/child/buffalo/griffin/whatever.
My solution to tailgating when I was on my way home from a paintball match was to toss a handful of balls out the sunroof.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Old joke:
I was recently riding with a friend of mine.
We were coming to a red light, and he shoots right through it. I ask him, "Why'd you do that?" He tells me this is how his brother drives.
We come to another red light, and again, he shoots right through it. I ask him, "Why'd you do that?" Again, he tells me this is how his brother drives.
We come to a green light, and he slams on the brakes. My heart nearly goes into my throat. I shouted at him, "Why do you do that?!"
He replied, "You never know, my brother could be coming the other way."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
"they called it the "fundamental error of assumption""...
I think you mean the fundamental attribution error?
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The person tailgating you is likely going faster than you. So why do you feel it's your right/duty to block them? You are not the enforcer of laws. Get out of the way, let them go by, or whatever. It's not your job to police people. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Why do you feel they have a higher-priority right to go faster than I do to go the speed I'm going? If they don't like the speed I'm driving, they can pass me. It's not like I'm driving under the speed limit - I'm generally a few MPH above it. Also you apparently think tailgating only happens on freeways, since "getting out of the way" isn't practical on a two lane road.
My solution to tailgating is to slow down. As soon as they back off - or as soon as they're not behind me (passing or whatever) - I immediately return to normal speed. But, frankly, if they're going to drive in a way that increases the chances of an accident involving me, I'm going to make sure any accident happens at a lower speed.
#DeleteChrome
Not really linked to the story, but it gives me a chance to relate this tale of idiocy.
A friend was pulled over by police for running through an intersection just as it turned from amber to red instead of stopping. She said that because the car behind was tailgating (business as usual), to have stopped would have caused an accident, so in her judgement it was safer to continue. That cut no ice and she was booked. Eventually they let her go and then pulled out behind her and followed. At the next intersection, the lights were on amber so this time she stopped. The police patrol car ploughed straight into her rear. They booked her again (she was naturally livid) but elected to take the matter to court. She was cleared of all charges including the original offence and the police had to pay all costs. Justice.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to press on on amber - I usually stop but only if there's time to do it without the half-asleep moron behind rearranging the back of your car.
How about a ramp that pops up, so the red light runner will just end up flying over the intersection, Dukes of Hazzard style? Even better if the intersection had a PA system to play Dixie when it happens.
It might not be pretty when they land, that's their problem for running the light...