Comments on: Can we improve traffic safety and efficiency by eliminating traffic lights?

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:57:50 +0000

Can we improve traffic safety and efficiency by eliminating traffic lights?

Yes, just replace the lights with roundabouts.

By: B.D. @ LI

B.D. @ LI — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 03:42:10 +0000

According to my friends in France, most of the traffic signs are Yield signs. Because the French don’t like authority, placing a stop sign at an intersection is done almost apologetically by the officials, and only with significant justification.

I agree with Alex – I drive a lot in MA and the unwritten rule is that you need both a light AND a stop sign for people to realize you’re serious! Of course, MA is the only place I know that uses flashing green lights as a traffic signal….

By: D.A. @ LI

D.A. @ LI — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 03:41:15 +0000

In Naples, there may as well be no traffic lights – everyone ignores them. How well it works compared to other systems I don’t know, but traffic eventually moves and pedestrians survive somehow.
We have some roundabouts in Boston and they work well for light traffic. However, many cities have added traffic lights to busy round-abouts, so they don’t work in all situations.
In Minneapolis they meter the freeway on-ramps – this increases the chances that they can keep traffic from reaching the “stop and go” stage – hence increasing the percentage of good flow.
Seems that several systems work for light traffic – the challenge is to have things that work in heavy traffic – aside from using an alternative to cars driven by human beings.

By: D.W. @ LI

D.W. @ LI — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:09:54 +0000

New York has had coordinated signal systems, where you can get all green lights when traveling at the speed limit, for many years. In the 90s they installed a more sophisticated system, similar to the one installed in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympics, which uses a computerized control center which gets input from senors at intersections and cameras to control traffic patterns. There is also such a system on Long Island, and probably other places in the U.S.

By: M.F. @ LI

M.F. @ LI — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:09:18 +0000

Roundabouts are much safer and less stressing for the drivers than traffic lights. And as E. said above, in normal traffic conditions the drivers have to wait much less.

By: AIF @ LI

AIF @ LI — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:59:09 +0000

I read somewhere about proposition to replace stop signs with “yield” and a demonstration how this speed up moving thru the intersection not even talking about saving lots of gas.
I was pleasantly surprised how well “roundabouts” manage traffic in England.
Here in MA we have quite a few rotaries mostly of the older construction before lights appeared everywhere.
This are good ideas overall however I don’t believe it is doable with the menace drivers we have – young females on SUVs who never yield to anybody or put away their cell phones.

We also getting European-style “green wave” in some towns when lights are timed to be green all the way if you drive at speed limit. I could remember these things in Europe from late 70s, so it took them 30 years to cross the pond. My guess because timing lights together requires installation of signal wiring between intersections which drives up project costs.

By: A.P. @ LI

A.P. @ LI — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:44:38 +0000

I have several “uncontrolled” intersections along my daily commute (i.e, they have stop signs instead of signal lights). I continue to be amazed at how few people actually know how to handle these intersections. They not only do not know the “rules” for how to behave in these situations but seem to have no common sense with which to figure them out (and these “rules” are little more than common sense to begin with). Several times, only quick application of brakes have kept me from ending up in an accident as someone either runs the sign or makes a left turn in front of me.

I’d hate to see what it would be like in a big city instead of this small one.

By: L.H.

L.H. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:03:53 +0000

You pose an interesting juxtaposition of “antenna-gate” and the messages to be drawn from some news pieces about removing traffic lights.

Mistaken assumptions about the real world are just one of the forces illustrated here. As is often the case with news reporting, however, there are additional forces at play.

An important force is that of ideology interfering with engineering judgement. The first video made no effort to hide its libertarian message. Clearly that’s social, yet there are other social values that traffic lights do support. For example, the ticketing of red-light runners provides a basis for shifting insurance costs to the people who make riskier choices. Stop lights also provide a solution to certain problems, such as when traffic is dramatically heavier on one road than another, by ensuring that the busy road doesn’t completely block the quiet road. In short, “are stop lights good or bad?” is presented ideologically, and therefore forces sub-optimal decisions in both directions, a problem that ideologies are notorious for.

Another force is inertia. A stop light, design, or validation procedure may be perfectly fine until circumstances change. Traffic patterns change by time of day, season, growth era, even by isolated events. While traffic lights are fixed in their location, a whole other set of changing circumstances affect mobile devices: e.g., vehicles of motion, altitude, population density, geopolitics. An inability to anticipate and adapt to varying circumstances thus is a force in creating solutions that are, or eventually become labeled as, bad.

I must also say that the inadequate reporting left me asking, “So, how does removing stop lights compare with other solutions, such as roundabouts, stop signs, congestion charges, bypass roads, etc.?”

By: N.E. @ LI

N.E. @ LI — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:20:58 +0000

Here in Seattle we about as dumb as sheep. Every left turn is guarded with a “green arrow”. Rarely is there an option to turn left on “generic green”, yielding to oncoming traffic. And when there is such an option the average “Joe driver” does not understand the term yield to oncoming traffic.

Left-lane Interstate drivers poking along with a delta-V of barely 0.5 mph over the traffic they are passing – if they are passing at all.

In my estimation, our traffic mess is the sole result of comatose sleep-driving. Take away the traffic signals here and you get mayhem. It happens, we get power outages and the traffic backs up for miles. Left to decentralized decision making, here in Seattle, no decision gets made.

By: E.V. @ LI

E.V. @ LI — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:19:46 +0000

Fully agree. As CEO/CTO of my own company I stress that the first tester is the developer, not the test engineer, but that after the test engineer I will execute the idiot test to avoid that this role becomes executed by our customers. It is sometimes amazing how in a few minutes my “idiot” test reveals issues (mainly applies to GUI’s).
Engineers often need to learn the hard way that good engineering is team work. The team must also include also non technical people.