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Originally Posted by sperry
What I'd really like to see are even more intelligent lights that will adapt to the cars on the road to get them to their desination faster, instead of punishing them. Sure someone may be speeding, but he won't feel that he has to if all the lights are green for him along his route.
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I've wondered about this for a while. With all the communication links to every intersection these days, coupled with modern computing speed and low cost, how hard would it really be to network the lights and estimate incoming traffic flow to any given intersection? The priority weighting could vary slightly depending on time of day --- heck, the weighting could be automatically updated once a month or something based on observed traffic volume in each lane through the intersection during the same time intervals on each day. Initially what we're talking about here is the quasi-intelligent ability of a light to alter its timing by a few seconds in either direction based upon speed & volume observations from neighboring intersections. The amount of flexibility would either be pre-weighted based on time of day/cross-traffic volume or be weighted in real-time based on current cross-traffic volume.
If the system breaks, the lights could always drop back to the stupid default settings they have now.
Call me crazy, but I spent way too much time during my delivery days of observing (and cursing) traffic-light patterns rather than driving to my next destination.