Rethinking Traffic Lights

The best system I've seen here is the one where the light stays green and only changes to red when there is cross traffic present. The progressive signal change is not a good system, as fast drivers have to brake at the red, slowing down following traffic, which defeats the purpose of progressive light change.

I recently visited a college engineering day where a student designed a traffic light which showed the yellow and red lights at the same time but the angle at which the lights could be seen were different. so if you were close the light would appear green and would be seen as red further out. The concept was to prevent the last second should I gun it or slam on the brakes to avoid running a yellow to red transition. There is obviously some issues with this, but interesting none the less.

In the 70's (maybe even today, I cannot say), some lights in and around London went "all-round-red", usually late at night, the first car to approach the light ( sensors were placed around 100 yards before the light on each approach road), got an instantaneous green. Great for all concerned.

I personally feel that "all-round-red" is intrinsically safer than "all-round-green".......especially when many (bad) drivers will race across an early red late at night......in any country that I have visited.....possibly hitting the person who has "retained" the green legally, so to say....

In the Syracuse situation, How many accidents have there been at these lights over the years and does this figure compare with the national / N.Y. average. People with red / green colour blindness negotiate traffic lights by looking at the brightness rather than the colour. Does a colour blind driver have a legitimate defence against a ticket for running a red light in this area?

Good question; it sparked my inner internet sleuth. It does seem to be an issue.

I've only found anecdotes from individuals--so nothing credible. An individual on YouTube reported said he could only remember one crash from a colorblind person who was unfamiliar with the intersection. There are several types of colorblind, and one Syracuse driver reports that the green more resembles white to him, while the red is a darker illumination.

The only indication of something awry at the intersection is Stone Thrower's Park, which features a statue of young people pointing at the light with rocks and slingshots in tow.

Good point!!!!

This is a very bad idea. Many people are color blind; they can't tell the difference between red and green. They rely on the red being on top. The Irish who broke the lights should be "pinched".

Maybe a redesign of traffic signals are in order to take colorblindness into account. We could have an "X" pattern associated with a red light and a vertical line in green and a diagonal line in yellow.

I think a fairly simple redesign of the lights could help clarify their meaning for all concerned, color-blind or not. Your suggestion of an X in the red is excellent (pun hopefully intended). But rather then clutter up the other 2 lights with lines, why not keep it simple by incorporating shapes in the lamps as follows:

[X] = STOP (square red lamp with X in it)

[ ] = CAUTION (square yellow lamp)

( ) = GO (round green lamp)

Only the Green is round / only the Red has an X / the yellow is closest to red in meaning, so it is square.

It just struck me, the mentality of the people "offended" by the fact that one particular colour is "usually" placed above an other......even in Ireland (both of them!), the red is placed at the top......so its not an Irish mentality, its a New York Irish mentality......

I suppose that they will react the same for any big motor starter buttons, many modern electronics and and and and........

Childish is the kindest word I can find.....

I had heard that the increase in traffic circles/roundabouts is a way to save gas, keep traffic moving and reduce traffic lights. Do Roundabouts Reduce Accidents?

Many of the traffic lights in the Schenectady area are set to go green for off peak times with sensors on the side streets to change the lights so that traffic can cross.

I like the idea of different symbols within the lights for red, green and yellow so that those who are color blind can easily see which light is on. Blinking red lights and lights with shades on the top also seem to help in low visibility or bright sunlight conditions.

When I was young, there were rotaries in many states in the Northeast, but they fell out of favor, especially in the 80s, when there was an aggressive movement to get rid of them. In Rhode Island, where I lived at the time, a state highway engineer who was a neighbor of mine told me that they caused too many accidents. Why? "Because of right-of-way conflicts." Well, why not put some big, honkin' "Yield" signs at the entrances, instead of expecting everyone to have actually read the state driver's manual? Ironically, the signs did go up, but only AFTER the removal campaign was underway. This was when I first began to suspect that highway engineers were the guys who got bad grades in engineering school, and had to take what they could get after the sexy engineering jobs went to the best and brightest.

The majority of rotaries in the 50s and 60s (the smaller ones) were virtually identical to today's "roundabouts," but larger ones appeared with increasing frequency in the 70s and 80s at some interstate / secondary highway intersections, and as smaller ones were slowly, then more rapidly, disappearing.

A brief survey of current articles on rotaries and traffic circles (including the one linked above) indicates that there is emerging a revisionist mythology about them that's apparently designed to promote "roundabouts" as New! Improved! European! and Not Your Father's Rotary! Roundabouts, it is said, are smaller than rotaries, which were "several hundred feet across" (I never saw one that big, except for the interstate / secondary highway intersections). Roundabouts, it is said, are set up with entering cars yielding, while some rotaries were set up for entering cars having the right of way (I never saw one like that, either-- at worst, there were no yield signs either way).

So I'm wondering whether the standard for highway-engineering historiography has fallen in line with the lazy standards of online "journalism" that googles around the internet for a while and just grabs any story that sounds plausible and repeats it, or if there's some method to the madness, and the mythology is being created as a sales pitch. Perhaps it's a C.Y.A. maneuver to hide the old mistakes of the profession. Nah, more likely it's a combination of the internet-journalism protocol and the ideologue's manipulative use of language. After all, in a postmodernist age, we should embrace language as a manipulative tool, because there's no such thing as objective truth, anyway, right?

I always preferred rotaries to stop lights, where feasible. Rotaries and the New! Improved! European! roundabouts are fluid and flexible, and no one ends up sitting and idly waiting for no good reason.

I suppose it would be too much to expect American drivers to deal with this, but I wonder how it would be if, instead of a hard stop light, large, lighted "Stop and Yield" signs came on at the tops of the stacks, an all-direction expansion of the "right on red" concept (where visibility and other conditions permit). Oh, never mind. I've seen too many drivers interpret a red light as a green right arrow.

Here in So Cal, they put up two traffic circles off the 5 freeway at Hasley Canyon. I think they're the greatest thing to reduce backed up traffic. You simply yield to traffic in the circle, pick the inner or outer lane (depending on where you want to exit the circle) and you're not stuck waiting for a red light.

I find that it reduces traffic, allows a much better flow and reduces backed up traffic (I rarely see more than three cars waiting to get into the circle). When the circle is clear, I can zoom in and out of the circle. When traffic is mild, I may have to stop, but only for a fraction of a minute.

Traffic circles do take more space and people who aren't accustom to them have trouble negotiating. I've seen people drive the wrong way - yes, they really do! I've seen people in the circle yield to traffic coming in - dangerous, because we regulars do not plan to stop once we get into the circle. One person even tried to go straight through the center - I think he was drunk, but you never know.

Since they put the traffic circles in, traffic flows and there are no longer cars stopped on the freeway just before the exit (improved safety), it cuts out the time we're waiting at red lights and it must be good for the environment - less idling = less gas and emissions.