Catching the ‘Green Wave’ – Audi Introduces Smart Traffic Lights in Düsseldorf | Hacker News Reader

Catching the ‘Green Wave’ – Audi Introduces Smart Traffic Lights in Düsseldorf

autofutures.tv

11 pointscaminocorner6 comments

Sounds like a more expensive version of a system I saw in Novosibirsk, Russia about 10 years ago:

There were displays hung next to the traffic lights that told you what speed you should be going to get the next green light. It would top out at 'speed limit'.

It worked for all cars, even the ancient soviet ones.

I found that my commute had predictable timings. Drive at exactly 28 mph, and you’d hit the green wave. As my commute was over 50% of my travel, and the pattern was learned in just a few days of observation, I question how valuable this service will really be. In my other commutes, I was stuck in stop and go traffic, and this ‘Green Wave’ detection wouldn’t help. It’s for a corner case of non highway driving outside of rush hour. Yet, I can see how it would appeal to the German sense of proper order and over engineering.

Why is this not available to drivers of other brands as a simple app if the local authorities, and thus all taxpayers, are funding this?

Someone would have to fund an app, much like how Audi is funding the centralized infrastructure that collects the data from cities and vends it out to their cars. [1]

In fact it doesn’t sound like the cities have any significant role except to provide a dump of signal phase timing data. This article suggests that most traffic lights use unpredictable phase timings based on traffic levels, but that is false - most are predictable according to the time of day.

Of course, both parties have an interest in making this system sound like more of a technological achievement than a political one, and they are marketing it accordingly, using terms like “vehicle to infrastructure”, “networked traffic lights”, etc.

Audi’s end of the deal is to provide reciprocal data to local authorities:

> “We aggregate the recorded data into reports that we will make available to the city authorities. Traffic lights can then be given more efficient phasing and traffic will flow better,” adds Hainzlmaier.

[1] https://www.traffictechservices.com/how-it-works.html

Are drivers going to speed up like madmen just to catch the “green wave”?

Rather obviously the green wave would be optimized to match the speed limit plus acceleration time.

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