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The Intelligent Intersection Could Banish Traffic Lights Forever (arstechnica.com)
Jonathan M. Gitlin reports via Ars Technica: With a degree of coordination -- between vehicles, and with traffic infrastructure -- traffic chaos should theoretically be banished, and less congestion means fewer pollutants. Clemson researcher Ali Reza Fayazi has provided a tantalizing glimpse at that future, a proof-of-concept study showing that a fully autonomous four-way traffic intersection is a hundred times more efficient at letting traffic flow than the intersections you and I currently navigate. Because cars don't sit idling at the lights, Fayazi calculated it would also deliver a 19 percent fuel saving. Fayazi designed an intersection controller for a four-way junction that tracks vehicles and then uses an algorithm to control their speeds such that they can all pass safely through the junction with as few coming to a halt as possible. What makes the study particularly interesting is that Fayazi demonstrated it by interspersing his own physical car among the simulated traffic -- the first use of a vehicle-in-the-loop simulator for this kind of problem. Fayazi drove his real car at the International Transportation Innovation Center in Greenville, South Carolina, where a geofenced area was set up to use as the simulated intersection. Using GPS sensors, his car was just as visible to the intersection controller as the virtual autonomous vehicles that were also populating its memory banks. Ideally, Fayazi says he'd like to have tested it with an autonomous vehicle, but they are hard to come by, particularly in South Carolina. Instead, the intersection controller directly governed his speed in the study (as it did with the simulated vehicles), and this controller sent him a speed to maintain in order to safely cross the junction. Over the course of an hour, the intelligent intersection only required 11 vehicles to come to a complete halt. By contrast, when the simulation was run with a traffic light instead, more than 1,100 vehicles had to stop at the junction over the course of an hour.
Aside from the obvious pedestrian issues (which can be addressed by the Buddhist street crossing technique: just walk at a constant speed through the intersection), this is a pretty obvious solution.
...is way to make drivers drive at the mandated speeds. Which, of course, they won't do; you only have to look at how speed limits are obeyed to know that.
...and motorcycles, and baby strollers, and delivery people moving boxes, and letter carriers, and dogs, and cats, and children playing.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Just imagine all the new & profitable ways for the rich to fuck over the rest of us!
It's really quite ridiculous we don't have more of them in the US instead of four-way stops and traffic lights.
It's not ridiculous at all - it's a simple space issue. A round about takes more space than a simple intersection with a traffic light. A cloverleaf intersection is even safer and faster than a round about, but it takes even more space and also requires the building of bridge.
Cities already devote enormous amounts of space to the movement of cars. They can't spare any more, at least in the downtown areas. Using round abouts more frequently in the suburbs would make sense though.