Posted in Uncategorized on October 21st, 2008 by feef
Car gadget may spell end of red lights for motorists – Telegraph
Audi has invented a device which will allow motorists to avoid red lights, telling drivers what speed to go in order to arrive at traffic lights when they are green.
To use a technical term… bollocks.
A friend of mine is a traffic signals engineer and still can’t predict when the signals will change, on signals that he has programmed.
“Some lights run fixed times, SCOOT, Vehicle Activated, MOVA, CLF plans when the UTC comms are down, and often arterial reversion or even All Red at night. They switch timings according to time of day, traffic density, whether
there is a bus coming, whether the bus is late, if there’s an emergency vehicle detection system fitted, and vehicle speed over the stopline.
Some have loop detection, some MVDs, some both, some occupancy loops, some hurry call loops, some speed differentiation loops, they have different extend and gap out values, and several sets are deliberately timed so if you run an amber at one light you’ll be running a very dark amber at the next one and get T-boned or GATSOd at the third.”
