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Audi Cars Now Talk To Stop Lights In Vegas (ieee.org)
Audi says its cars can now tell drivers how many seconds remain until the traffic light turns green. It's the first commercial offering of vehicle-to-infrastructure communication in the United States, it adds. From a report, submitted by an anonymous reader: Of course, nobody would pay much extra for an electronic gadget that just lowered your stoplight waiting anxiety. But this feature is just testing the waters; bigger applications are in view. The cars -- recently manufactured Audi A4 and Q7 models signed onto Audi's prime connection service -- communicate with the Las Vegas traffic management system via 4G LTE, the standard mobile phones use. The countdown appears on the dashboard or heads-up display, then shuts off a few seconds before the light changes (presumably to keep drivers from getting mesmerized). Audi manages the transfer of data with the help of its partner, Traffic Technology Services (TTS), of Beaverton, Ore. The plan is to eventually give drivers the information they need to make fairly ambitious predictions, like choosing the right speed to go sailiing through several green lights in a row. Or the system might bypass the driver and go straight to the engine's "start-stop" system, shutting it down for a long count, then starting it up again seconds before getting a green light.
(holds breath)
Anyone else notice /. was using an expired ssl certificate earlier today?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world they are aware of countdown traffic lights, which provide a much simpler solution to this problem.
the big trick here isnt getting people to drive an audi, but getting them to look up from their cellphones long enough to pay attention to the car.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dear car makers,
Instead of pushing useless gadget that nobody cares about, what about trying to develop affordable hybrid and electric vehicles? Right now, buying a hybrid mid-range car costs as much as buying a luxury car, which nobody sane would ever do. So please, focus on affordable green cars instead of bullshit toys.
Sincerely,
A Parisian stuck in the winter smog.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
* If there is no car in front of me I still have to wait for the light to turn green (and then some in the US to avoid red light runners) /can't act like plug flow in a pipe unless you build in major automated convoy support)
* If there is a car ahead of me I still have to wait for them to move before I can move.
* If I have a car that shuts the engine down when stopped (and I have driven such cars), the engine already instantly comes on when my foot lifts from the brake pedal (and if it doesn't it won't happen with the App either)
* If you are driving in traffic you still can't beat the dynamics of all those other people (and traffic doesn't
* If it is just you on a main road then it tries to keep the traffic flowing by defaulting to green lights in your direction (and it's those pesky side road drivers who screw up your green lights)
* If it is just you on a side road then the lights will be defaulted against you anyway.
So what are they really trying to solve? They already have a bunch of sensors/cameras that can be used to sample traffic and tell you what the current traffic patterns are.
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Some ignoramus will jump the light and kill someone.
Well by all means, let's keep cheering on the 0-60MPH race being championed in the electric vehicle world right now, because ludicrous speeds are all that matters. Fuck safety.
100% instant torque and a stoplight countdown timer built into the fucking dashboard...what could possibly go wrong?
The reason why the stoplights for perpendicular traffic lanes have "blinders" on them is because people's reaction to the light switching colors is a consideration of the time on Yellow Lights.
If you have some drivers with Asymmetric information advantage: the yellow light times will be based on the general public's behavior, and a subset of that public will start moving into the intersection earlier due to the lack of surprise improving their reaction time to the light switch.
The most useful thing IMO would be the yellow-to-green much of europe has.
I can see a few problems with this:
I can see drivers approaching a red light looking at the display instead of looking at where they are going
Jumping the red - knowing that it will be changing green soon - this will increase chance of collisions from people running the red the other way.
Increase chance of pedestrians getting run over
The last time I was in Germany, in the early 90s, the yellow-to-green thing was pretty annoying. If you were first at the light and you didn't start rolling when that light turned yellow, everyone would start honking at you. Didn't matter that you technically couldn't go until it turned green, that didn't stop the impatient ones from laying on the horn.
I've been talking to traffic signals for years.
Have gnu, will travel.
Interestingly, not on TGVs which are among the most common high speed trains in Europe (470 trains). These trains have power cars at both ends.
On the other hand, German ICE (InterCity Express) and Swiss ICN (InterCity Neigezug) both use the "no power cars / each wagon with an electric motor" configuration (though not on 1st class wagons in the swiss case to diminish noise).
- This gives them tremendous power enabling them to climb steeper slopes than normal powercars (which is useful in hilly pre-Alpine regions)
- This gives them very efficient regenerative braking (In switzerland, two train coming down from the Lötschberg tunnel can entirely power one train climbing up to it).
I've also seen it on Czech Pendolinos.
I seem to remember that Austria's ÖSB has also such configuration, but I'm not 100% sure.
But funny that you mention: seems indeed that the French TGV are almost the only high speed trains not doing it.
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