Slashdot | Self-Adapting Traffic Lights

Slashdot | Self-Adapting Traffic Lights

intersting read on adaptable traffic lights. here's a snippet from the forthcoming article:

""If you're like me, I bet you hate moments when you're in a hurry and all the traffic lights seem to intentionally switch to red just in front of your car. Now, according to Nature, a Belgian traffic researcher thinks that traffic lights that respond to local conditions could ease congestion and reduce your frustration. His method would not give you the individual power to switch the light to green. But if you were part of a group of cars approaching a red light, inexpensive traffic-flow sensors would detect your group in advance and turn the light to green. His simulations show that such adaptive traffic control is 30% more efficient than traditional ways of regulating traffic. However, his system has not been adopted by any large city. So you'll continue to be frustrated by these ?%&$! traffic lights for a while. You'll find more details and references in this overview."

i'm not so sure that i'd be totally happy with that. it's a double-edged sword. in one hand, you approach a light with a group of other cars, the light/mechanism "senses" the number of vehicles and automatically adjusts to let that group go next or sooner than another, yet smaller, group of vehicles at the same intersection. i'd be happy if i was in the larger group of cars, but if i'm in the smaller group and i look over to see that there was a larger group to the right or left of me, i'd be a little unhappy. like i said, double-edged sword.

another thing to throw a wrench into these spokes...what about pedestrians? how does the sensor deal with them? or does it? would the pedestrian crosswalk buttons be eliminated? if you ask me, they never did anything anyway.