Smarter Traffic Lights Will Turn Green Just For You

There are so many jokes and smart alecky remarks to be made here, it's overwhelming....lol

Great now they can program the lights for maximum profit...currently $350-500 per violation....(first smart alecky remark)

http://www.highwayrobbery.net/

Sorry, mine beat yours. ;-)

Technically correct, but geographically lacking....

Intelligent traffic lights? Is that in comparison to the city planers that install the ones we have now?

There, now we have the first joke.

A car breaks down along the expressway one day, so the driver eases it over onto the shoulder of the highway. He jumps out of the car, opens the trunk, and pulls out two men in trench coats.

The men stand behind the car, open up their coats and start exposing themselves to the oncoming traffic. This results in one of the worst pile-ups in history.

When questioned by police why he put two deviates along the side of the road, the man replied, "I broke down and was just using my emergency flashers!"

A man decided that he was going to ride a 10-speed bike from Phoenix to Flagstaff. He got as far as Black Canyon City before the mountains just became too much and he could go no farther.

He stuck his thumb out, but after 3 hours hadn't gotten a single person to stop. Finally, a guy in a Corvette pulled over and offered him a ride. Of course, the bike wouldn't fit in the car. The owner of the Corvette found a piece of rope lying by the highway and tied it to his bumper. He tied the other end to the bike and told the man that if he was going too fast, to honk the horn on his bike and that he would slow down.

Everything went fine for the first 30 miles. Suddenly, another Corvette blew past them. Not to be outdone, the Corvette pulling the bike took off after the other. A short distance down the road, the Corvettes, both going well over 120 mph, blew through a speed trap.

The police officer noted the speeds from his radar gun and radioed to the other officer that he had two Corvettes headed his way at over 120 mph. He then relayed, "...and you're not going to believe this, but there's guy on a 10 speed bike honking to pass."

Two guys are driving through Texas when they get pulled over by a state trooper. The trooper walks up, taps on the window with his nightstick, the driver rolls down the window, and the trooper smacks him in the head with the stick.

The driver says, "Why'd you do that?

The trooper says, "You're in Texas, son. When I pull you over, you'll have your license ready."

Driver says, "I'm sorry, officer, I'm not from around here."

The trooper runs a check on the guy's license, and he's clean.

He gives the guy his license back and walks around to the passenger side and taps on the window. The passenger rolls his window down, and the trooper smacks him with the nightstick.

The passenger says, "What'd you do that for?"

The cop says,"Just making your wishes come true."

The passenger says, "Huh?"

The cop says, "I know that two miles down the road you're gonna say, 'I wish that sucker would've tried that sh*t with me!'"

There was a system trialed here in Melbourne about 20 years ago along one of the main inbound/outbound roads to/from the eastern suburbs to the city.

About every km or so there was an electronic sign telling you the ideal speed to travel so as not to have to stop at the next intersection. It got down as low as about 35kmh (22mph).

The net result was that anyone who slowed down to utilise this great advice got left for dead by a gradually increasing number of d&%$heads until almost no-one used them anymore.

They were ripped out a year or so later, never to be repeated.

Put a person in a car and they c-h-a-n-g-e!!! (Disney showed us that).

SolarEagle,

All these jokes - are you trying for a higher unemployment check?

Check? Check? nobody told me about any check...But if you're offering me a raise, I'll take it!

I am sure that Portland, Oregon is not the only place with a good traffic light system, London for example.

I don't know the entire history of London's computer controlled Traffic Lights but they have had them since the 60's or so. (I am talking about a centrally controlled system that gets the traffic in and out of the whole of greater London at the best possible speeds, not local systems to each light).

I believe GEC was the first company to do that for London, Univac was the next in the late 70's and installed many smaller computers to do the job (MiniComputers of the day). The principle was sensors in the roads well before the light, telling the centrally placed computer(s) from which direction the traffic as coming and the numbers of vehicles and using previously stored data for that area, the computer would know approximately where this traffic needed to go and would switch its lights accordingly.

The computers also "knew" weekends, holiday days, weather and many other parameters.

We used (relatively slow) modems at that time to control the light and send changing data back and forth.

If the communications broke down, the intelligence built into the lights took over till the comms came up again. But it was never as good as the control from the central mini computers....

I know that traveling against the main flow was bad news as all the resources worked to get rush hour traffic first and foremost to it's destination, not anyone else!!

German traffic light systems even today, work mostly like the UK systems did before the 1960's, they are abominable......and have never heard of "all round Red" which speeds up London's night time traffic when few cars are on the road, something that any country could use all over....

There is an interesting small post here:-

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2002/07/24/software-crashes-london-traffic-lights-2119737/

I am sure the systems I helped install are long gone, but I expect the principles still apply.....just with "greener" bulbs, now LED instead of filament.

Sadly, I was not able to find an updated article on London's present day system, perhaps some one else knows of one?

A number of years ago the city of St. Petersburg, FL, set up timed lights on 1st Ave N and 1st Ave S. Both are 1-way streets; 1st Ave S being eastbound toward downtown St. Pete, and 1st Ave N being westbound leading away from downtown St. Pete.

The lights were timed so that if you traveled the posted speed limit, 35 mph, you would not hit a red light. The problem was, of course, that during rush-hour* few people were patient enough to drive the speed limit and after two lights there was a raindrop-shaped knot of traffic that was having to brake at every light. I found that if I moved steadily along at the tail end of the raindrop I could at least get through 6 lights before the knot got too big and forced me to brake too.

*St. Pete was still mostly a city of retirees back then so rush-hour traffic was pretty light compared to most cities.

Here we have the Senior Golden Rush Hour. It runs from 1 PM to 3:30 PM. It is worse than traffic at lunch time. Yes, I know it is more than one hour. Seniors are a little slow down here.

We also have longer than average lights. They are probably that way to allow people a little more time to wake up after sleeping during the red cycle.

Note, the Senior Golden Rush Hour is not just for seniors. About 40% of those offenders are much younger and I can only assume they are practicing for their own golden years of driving.

Finally, another sure sign of traffic headaches is when you spot someone driving a gold colored car. We call it Buick Gold, but it doesn't just apply to Buicks. For some reason that paint scheme has been adopted on many different makes and models as a warning to other motorists.

AH, as I near retirement, family and friends suggest I consider Florida. My son lives with his family in New Port Richey. I tell him, and everyone else "no thanks, I don't want to retire just to live around a lot of old people".

I get a lot of ugly looks from people in Virginia of retirement age when I say that, but that just tempts me to ask them "So, why aren't YOU retired in Florida, then?"

The good news is there is a lot of young people here, too.

My son, his wife, 3 of my grandkids. Yep. I know. But I'll visit, thanks. And I DO like to visit!

Question is whether they like me to, since I spoil my grandkids.