Cars, drivers, traffic lights, signs to cooperate proactively
cordis.europa.eu
cordis.europa.eu
New Traffic Lights System. Initially this would work in tandem with the existing traffic lights grid system. In each car would be a display in the driver's field of vision, displaying a mini-traffic light (red, amber, green). This could be attached to an in-car display, or as 3 standalone lights above/on the steering wheel or other convenient location. When the lights turn green, all drivers in a queue see the green light come on, and receive an audio alert (like a 'ping' when the microwave is done). This would allow all drivers to move off simultaneously, which would improve drivers' reaction times at the lights. I think this would improve traffic flow and reduce congestion, and is totally possible with current technology.
All sorts of new improvements over the current traffic lights system could be made using this as a starting point:
- as mentioned in the article, priority for emergency vehicles built-in
- if a driver approaches a junction where the lights are red, and he/she is the only car approaching that junction, the lights automatically turn green. This could be achieved by imaginatively using current technology (road traffic sensors, cameras, GPS, etc).
-'Traffic Shaping' - using many sources of data from sensors on cars and on the road to divert traffic around obstacles and blockages. The model could be adapted from the practice of internet traffic shaping, except in a non-evil way in this instance!
- logging of traffic accident sites by police, and traffic is immediately diverted away from the area once the accident is logged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping
What do you think? I'd love to see this happen, I think it has the potential to improve motorists lives greatly. Feel free to add further feature suggestions.