200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green | Hacker News Reader

200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

vrt.be

112 pointssvenfaw186 comments

> A simple example: at night, a main road mainly displays green, the side streets only get green for a very short time. If you arrive with the app from a side street, you can get green immediately, provided there is no traffic on the main road.

In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.

I don't understand why they need apps for this either. The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.

We have those in Poland. Sucks if you are on a bike. You need to wait for a car to turn it green for you.

In the Netherlands we have ones that detect warm bodies.

Sucks if you are a zombie...

Here in Zombieland we have cameras that can detect any bipedal movement.

Sucks if you drive a car

There's a road closure near me here in Rotterdam which has encouraged some people to get around it by cycling on a short patch of the tram track. It's quite funny to hear the "tram approaching" bell ringing only to look and see a small boy on his bike.

If they're using inductive vehicle detector loops in the pavement, those can be tuned to detect motorcycles and bicycles (probably not carbon fiber bikes though). Where I've seen and used loops tuned for bicycles, they have a different cut pattern and a painted bike to accent positions where the detector is likely to detect you... Sadly, they don't tend to have far back detectors (advance loops) tuned for bikes so an idle intersection won't be green when you get there like if you were a car. You can sometimes get a detection on a car tuned detector by riding right on top of the wire, but it's iffy.

I'd imagine camera detectors can be tuned for bicyclists as well, but I have less experience with those.

Here's a nice survey of bicycle detection options [1], if you're willing to work with whoever does traffic control near you, this might help get a conversation started. This is focused on US applications, but the ideas should be broadly applicable.

[1] https://altago.com/wp-content/uploads/ALTA_Bike_Detection_Wh...

My city has inductive bike sensors at specific intersections but many intersections (even ones with bike lanes) lack them. Cycling infrastructure is so half-assed in the US.

Cost per benefit? My friend is a commercial property guy and sometimes has to bring properties up to date for handicapped access.

He jokes that with how few handicapped people use the features, he could probably give people $1k each as an apology for not being able to go into the building and be far ahead.

I started thinking that for the most part most handicapped people would even take that deal. I think I would.

I don't think it costs that much more to use a D or Q pattern for the inductive loop instead of a circle for new loops. But, if the loops are already there, it is a lot of expense to put in new ones.

Adding a loop to bike lanes might be reasonable, or maybe it forces a controller upgrade and that's not reasonable... but if you make the lowest speed through lane and at least one of each protected turn lanes bike accessible (while otherwise doing loop work), that's good. I think the loops are pretty shallow, so if the road has significant rebuild/repair, it's time to address the loop design.

The key word for ADA is reasonable accomodation. It does add expense, and not every feature is used often, but it's 35 years since the ADA passed and the US is a lot more accessible now than it was in 1990. The window of reasonable changes over time too, of course.

Definitely didn't work for my carbon bike. It's annoying because sometimes those are put in place on very minor - major road crossings and those are dangerous to cross on red light (and the minor roads are exactly the ones you want to be on the bike). I had 2 of those on my usual loop when I lived in Poland. Sometimes I just waited for a car but especially on weekends I needed to risk it and run the red light as otherwise I would be stuck there for a few hours.

> Definitely didn't work for my carbon bike

Didn't work for my 200kg metal motorcycle either most of the time.

Since when did cyclists take notice of traffic lights?

If you think cyclists break more traffic rule than drivers your view or reality is distorted. Try looking at the data and then around. You just notice them breaking the rules because they are different than you. It's a bias worth correcting.

I notice them when I cycle. Most common infraction, which I can't understand due to the sheer danger, is running red lights. Wouldn't occur to me in a car, much less in a smaller vehicle.

Different than me? When I used to cycle, I skipped through traffic lights, when it seemed safe to, and I've seen many other cyclists do the same. It's not a bias, it's an observation. But I mainly said it as a joke, because it's a well known stereotype, for good reason. At least where I am.

I have one in my city in Canada. Basically, on the bike you have to mount your bike from the bike path onto the sidewalk and press the pedestrian walk button. That turns the light green. Extremely annoying.

So they assume perfect vehicle detection? Sensors should be used to speed up a regular cycle. They should not be the only thing changing a light.

Presumably the app would be able to signal the presence of an approaching car from a much longer distance than the inductive loops you typically see these systems, ensuring cars don't even need to slow down when approaching the intersection. (Saving gas, brake/tire wear, and time.)

It's also probably cheaper than the extra physical infrastructure needed for inductive loops, given that all the necessary equipment (phones, GPS, cell infrastructure) is already in place for most people.

>It's also probably cheaper than the extra physical infrastructure needed for inductive loops, given that all the necessary equipment (phones, GPS, cell infrastructure) is already in place for most people.

Assuming the procurement/contracting for said app is done competently, which seems questionable for most governments. Moreover even if it's cheaper, surely some sort of camera/sensor setup would be safer than drivers fiddling with an app?

I'm guessing they wouldn't need to fiddle with an app; the software would just automatically signal their approach based on GPS/navigation info.

I agree theoretically a camera + machine-learning based system could work just as well; I've always wondered why that wasn't standard on traffic lights these days given that the hardware would probably cost a few hundred dollars (if procurement for said hardware were done competently, which I suppose as you said, it probably wouldn't be).

why would you need machine learning? just detect a minimum of one bright light source, assume it's a headlight, and switch the lights. What the worse a false positive could do? this doesn't need AI

Comparable systems based on inductive loops work during the day. A design based on detecting headlights wouldn't. Software/compute is cheap and as you said reliability is not a safety concern.

We’ve had camera-triggered intersections for years now in Estonia. They seem to work equally well in daylight as well as darkness. I don’t think you need any ML for it either, you basically only need to detect motion within a predefined region which can be done with traditional CV algos quite reliably.

Are we are the stage where it is normal to be giving governments always on background access to our gps location voluntarily?

I mean, if your concern is government, your already shit out of luck between your cellphone pinging cell towers, license plate readers, CCTV cameras, Ring cameras, Wi-Fi pinging, etc.

(I would agree that I wouldn't necessarily want fine-grained gps location data being sent to the lowest bidding for-profit traffic light monitoring company.)

I can think of a few ways to do this in a privacy-preserving way. The traffic light doesn't need to know your location or who you are, just whether there is a car approaching. But yeah good chance whoever designed this didn't put that much thought into it.

> Are we are the stage where it is normal to be giving governments always on background access to our gps location voluntarily?

Yes. See Palantir for examples.

The drivers don’t “fiddle with an app”. The apps use geo location to notify the traffic control system when they are near an intersection.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/512118/flemish-traffic-lights-...

> As soon as a driver approaches an intersection with smart traffic lights, a signal is sent via their app and the cloud to the computer controlling those traffic lights.

And the reason only some maps apps work, is that Apple don't allow a background App to keep running that tracks GPS and reports location over data???

I'm guessing

AFAIK background location is opt in, but only requires the developer to check a box in their xcode project. It's not like you have fill out a form and have apple approve it or something.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/handl...

Surely the reason is that neither Apple Maps nor Google Maps is willing to add the code to interface with the special Flemish Traffic Signal API.

The market is too small, and there’s no profit to be made. Unlike the “you could take an Uber” ad in Google Maps.

Yes, but why do they want to be integrated with a maps App?

If it can work as a background App then why not? And if you're in charge of the Google Maps App, you know you'll get blamed for draining the battery and transmitting location data continuously.

It smells like someone in Belgium is lying or is looking for a scapegoat excuse.

The reasoning just doesn't sound right, technically.

Is there an international standard API for this? Perhaps one used mostly for emergency services? Neither Google nor Apple would want to code crap in for every single country's weird features.

Probably because maps apps can do useful things like tell the light whether you're intending to turn right or not.

Because users don’t want to install apps that have access to gps in the background.

> a signal is sent via their app and the cloud to the computer controlling those traffic lights

No network, red light. /s

Flemish person here: no one here understands it either. Probably CV-driven development for someone...

Or the meeting started with the open question: "How can we get our citizens to give us 24-hour location data on their whereabouts? How could we possibly spin it as something beneficial to them?"

So, uhhhhhhh, gps spoofing time?

> I don't understand why they need apps for this either.

Data.

You would be amazed how bad drivers are at actually hitting the correct stopping position for the inductive loops in the ground that sense cars. When I'm on my bike stopped on a small side street I often try and gesture for drivers to pull up so their car is over the vehicle sensor in the pavement and the light changes faster. Drivers have gotten angry and yelled at me for giving them a little "inch up" hand gesture.

> The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.

Historically, traffic control systems detected cars with sensors embedded in the road. The cars had to come to the light to be detected.

It's the most reliable method, but it requires the car to nearly come to a stop first to get to the right spot.

It's easy to imagine more complicated computer vision or radar systems detecting cars. These are orders of magnitude more complex, though. When cities install traffic infrastructure they want to leave it alone and service it as infrequently as possible. It also needs to last for decades before replacement. Modern systems that are cheap, robust, and can detect traffic from a distance throughout different conditions like rain, snow, dark, and fog reliably are a recent invention. It's going to be decades before these are widely retrofitted to long-standing infrastructure.

We've had traffic lights like that in the UK for ages. Where I am in the States these days, they're very common. There's one very effective one that manages my turning from the residential street onto to the main road. I was getting irritated at the weekend because I came across some lights that didn't have sensors. 5 cars stuck waiting at the lights for literally no one.

Of course, the other thing they do in the UK is use small roundabouts, that can handle a fair amount of traffic nice and smoothly.

I’m guessing that with location access they can probably do it without adding any infrastructure, just an API.

This is more or less how it worked in the small town where I grew up in the US as well. At night, almost all the lights would flash yellow from around 1AM til 6AM? I think. It's been a long time since I lived there.

Oh, I remember this used to happen in Berkeley. Not sure if it stopped, or if I just stopped walking outside late enough to see it :P

It totally makes sense as an approach. No point in having normal traffic light cycles on low-traffic streets at 2 AM.

A city nearby here in America also does something similar.

After 10:30pm through 6am, the main road's lights go blinking yellow, and the side road's lights to blinking red.

Its basically easy to get around, since most lights are now a yield or stop. No app goofiness or any of that. And it has been implementable for decades.

In America we have an even lower tech solution: if there's no traffic and nobody to see, you pretend the light is green.

In other parts of America there are these things called red-light cameras . . .

Or these people called policemen who will be overjoyed that you are making their boring night shift more interesting, not to mention rewarding. I only got ticketed by police twice in my entire life, and one of those times was when I ignored a red light (on a bicycle!) in the late evening at a big but completely deserted intersection. Then I learned that in Germany cyclists have to pay the same fine as motorists (100 € + processing fee + 1 "penalty point" on your driver's license if you have one, even if you're not driving a car), while pedestrians only pay 10 €.

I was looking for this response! I am in one of those parts of America where the complete absence of other cars is interpreted as a green light, even if nobody bothers to set them to turn to blinking red/yellow during the low traffic hours.

I know several intersections in America that do this. They go to a flashing red light because we do have an occasional problem with citizens who don't know that a traffic light that's not operating is an all-way stop sign, but the theory is the same.

> In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night!

Many American cities do this, too.

Well, they don't turn the lights off. They flash to distinguish this state from the power being off.

It's more common in smaller cities.

Are there still pedestrian crossings?

That's often overlooked with ideas like this.

This is only done when traffic is light enough so you can normally cross without any danger. But now that you mention it, there is one of these lights nearby with buttons for pedestrians, next time I'm there after 8 pm I could check if it comes back to life when you press a button...

I remember learning in primary school about 25 years ago about this new-fangled technology where they embed sensors in the road surface that allows the traffic light to change its cycle based on the traffic patterns.

Just in case you wonder, these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens.

They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ .

They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.

That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy.

When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc

My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license.

Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone...

In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.

Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...

> these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens.

While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.

> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?

The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.

> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race

What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.

Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.

"This can also be done by privacy friendly apps."

But it is not.

"The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights."

While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Pay us with your data, and we will provide you tweaking traffic lights. What exactly are you running defense for?

"Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation"

Have you driven in Belgium? It is what it is, not what it "should" be.

> While milking their data with gov backed incentives.

Again, the whole thrust of this article is that people aren't incentivized yet to use or switch navigation apps.

> But it is not.

Yet. If that is something you want, go fund some opensource mapping apps to add the feature.

Without detailed technical information, this seems like a reasonable approach to solve a hard problem that isn't well solved now. Opt-in traffic data collection via an open standard api seems like be best case scenario here.

I'd be interested in specific criticism about how mapping apps are given access to the API, what exact data has to be shared to enable or other specific aspects of this program.

Your knee-jerk reactionary talking points aren't interesting though.

Very glad to hear that. If the apps are made by commercial entities then presumably I get a choice of which one to use, which means in the absence of any artificial barriers I can choose one that respects my privacy (possibly something open-source).

If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.

You can dream of better yet! If the spec was required to be open source for the government project, then you could have commercial choices and some less feature rich open source version.

I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively.

Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.

I actually assumed that this is because the system tries to figure out where you will be by your planned route. so seeing the bike coming up is much later - for example when the bike will be coming around a corner

That's not how it works - the idea is your navigation app signals the lights in advance. If you will reach red lights in 1km, the app signals this and the lights will be green before you're there, so you don't need to slow down.

Most people do not use a navigation app for most trips (i.e. commuting to work, grocery shopping, or whatnot).

> Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.

The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything.

Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic."

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This isn't a system to detect if there are cars at an intersection. Wire loops and other systems already can and do measure cars like that.

This is a system to detect "in 32 minutes, twenty-five cars will come from the south, crossing sixteen cars from the east. By pausing the western traffic lights for three seconds, both streams of cars can drive past each other without clogging up the main intersection".

Users don't need to press buttons on apps, they're just using their existing navigation apps which are already providing them with directions (or in the case of Flitsmeister, speed cameras). Similar apps also exist for pedestrians and bikes in my country. My biking experience certainly has improved by having lights on empty/near empty intersections automatically turn green when I'm approaching.

I'd rather see more roundabouts rather than the badly scheduled traffic light system my city has, but the system works for me.

There's the ever-present privacy threat of sharing your (aggregate) location, of course, but in this case we're talking about the government, which pretty much has a live map of what phones are moving where already.

Do you know if there is any documentation on how they actually implement the algorithms behind it?

Seems like possibly it's a small enough region that you could cram it into a MILP solver?

Predict the exact traffic situation 32 minutes in the future? Where would the information come from? The actual system in Flanders predicts about 1 minute, and that only for the main arteries. And the system barely uses the info from the vehicles, the main source is induction loops. Only a small percentage of the vehicles send their location, and hardly any cyclist and pedestrians. Vehicles don't send their destination, only the 'turn-intention' on the next intersection. But even that is unreliable, so typically not used.

Is that level of complexity actually necessary? The way that the UK system appears to work (as a user) is that the IR sensor detects a vehicle approaching the intersection from the minor road and, if there are no vehicles approaching on the major road, it gives you a green light by the time you actually reach the junction.

I agree that the app-based system would theoretically be slightly better in that it has more information to work with, but given that we're basically talking about a stochastic process then it feels like the IR system should really be good enough.

It's not strictly necessary but it takes giving a crap and effort and constant auditing and reassessing to do all that light timing well with the current state of technology. Outsourcing that responsibility to centralized computer that can do most of it automatically and on a schedule is likely a huge improvement for the quality of programming/timing for the average light if only a neutral for the best ones.

Thank you, this is a much better explanation than in the article.

Cyclist aren't massive nor hot, on a hot summerday they will be cooler than the road surface. I think a camera with object recognition or something similar should be able to do it.

It's not the first time apps are being shoved where they shouldn't belong by the Flemish Government. They made a cooking app of half a million Euro [1] and there were trials where you could use an app to to get the deposit back on plastic bottles by scanning the bottle and your wastebag [2].

I'm not sure if it's incompetence, trying to look modern or just plain old corruption.

[1] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2025/05/27/kookapp-van-vlaamse-...

[2] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/05/23/cordacampus-proefpro...

> Cyclist aren't massive nor hot, on a hot summerday they will be cooler than the road surface. I think a camera with object recognition or something similar should be able to do it.

I don't know the technical details on how it's done here in Stockholm, even less in the suburbs where I've lived but it feels like magic that in some traffic lights in busier intersections they'll just trigger by themselves with enough distance that when I arrive with the bike at the intersection the lights are turning green for me.

I have looked for cameras but couldn't find them, it's even more puzzling in a specific intersection close to my house where I bike along a 4-lane road with only fields of wheat and grass, and the intersection I cross leads to an industrial area, there are only the posts for the pedestrian/bike lights and those still turn green, no cameras in sight, no detection trap on the pavement.

In Stockholm, we have 2 sets of sensors dug :

1. induction coil sensor dug in road at the traffic light

2. radar sensor at 100-200m from the traffic light

It feels like magic because if you hit sensor (2) and there are no other competing cars, the traffic light changes for you and you don't have to slow down.

This is the best solution. In Dublin, they only have sensor (1) and it feels really slow in comparison. You keep having to stop and start.

Indeed, here in Linz the few intelligent traffic lights we have are mostly for cyclists and the detection works great. On the three bridges there are counters that differentiate between trucks, cars, cyclists and pedestrians and they also work great.

How is this categorically wrong comment at the top of the thread?

Many cities use TPMS monitoring/fingerprinting on highways to gauge traffic levels. Wouldn't be shocked if they started using that for traffic light timings

Do bicyclists and pedestrians really require the use of sensors? There are a lot of paths around me that cross busy roads with traffic signals. We just press a button. It speaks after you press it for visually impaired users and shows a red light after you press it for audibly impaired users.

Do pedestrians need automatic detection? Not necessarily, although a beg button adds unnecessary friction.

Do cyclists need automatic detection? Yes, absolutely. If you think otherwise, would you want to park and exit your car every time you want to cross an intersection? It's no different for a cyclist.

Here (switzerland) lights turn red on purpose to slow down traffic. The idea is that if you see a green light in the distance, you are motivated to speed up to catch it before it turns red. If it is red in the distance, you slow down because you eventually have to stop, and when you are like 20m from it, detectors will see you and turn it green.

Aka Grünewelle (Green-wave)[1] if you drive the speed limit every light you reach will turn green.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave

Thanks for explaining, because the OP made it sound like the red light tricked you into wastefully shedding speed instead of letting you stay at the speed limit. Their language makes it sound like they view slowing traffic as intrinsically good, rather than just trying to prevent speeding.

I should have been clearer on two behaviors. What I describe is if you are "alone". Green light often (not everywhere) don't stay green if there is no car. But if there is traffic, it is made in such a way that when you get a green somewhere, you can expect every subsequent intersection to turn green when the head of the traffic arrives. So the first vehicle will see a red light turn green as they approach, and the ideal timing is around the speed limit. Further cars will have a green light, but with no intensive to speed as they are sandwiched between cars.

Also I should say that this is empirical evidence based on about 20 intersections I pass often. I don't know how much of a rule it is country wise as I don't pay attention to that when I go places I don't routinely go.

My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them. See also: people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane...

>My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them.

???

Seems like the far more plausible reason is that drivers don't want to be held up by a cyclist traveling at 10mph in front of them? Moreover if it's really true that lights only turn from red once a car reached them, then it makes sense to maintain speed (including overtaking any bicycles), because getting to the light faster means it turns to green sooner.

> Seems like the far more plausible reason is that drivers don't want to be held up by a cyclist traveling at 10mph in front of them?

You sound like one of thos drivers who believe it's OK to put other people at risk to save themselves a couple of seconds.

I see this all the time in my large truck that I'm very good at coasting into red lights. Even when there are already vehicles stopped at the light, people will not only stay on the gas way later than necessary and then brake unnecessarily hard but will also pass me to be sitting one car length further ahead at that light. Often it is done dangerously, without turn signals or proper blind spot checks. I know this because I've also almost been hit repeatedly on my motorcycle by cars doing this.

>You sound like one of thos drivers who believe it's OK to put other people at risk to save themselves a couple of seconds.

See my other comment. My point isn't that it's suddenly okay to overtake because the driver can shave off 5s, just that the cartoonishly evil caricature of the driver's reasoning that OP dreamed up isn't accurate. Unfortunately, judging by the downvotes it seems like people are interpreting my opposition to OP's claim that "Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them" as me arguing that it's fine for drivers to mow down cyclists to save 5s.

> just that the cartoonishly evil caricature of the driver's reasoning that OP dreamed up isn't accurate

"Cartoonishly evil"?!?

I'm pretty sure it is accurate for some subset of the driving population, which was the claim.

> Unfortunately, judging by the downvotes it seems like people are interpreting my opposition to OP's claim that "Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them" as me arguing that it's fine for drivers to mow down cyclists to save 5s.

You didn't actually provide any evidence or argument to dispute that claim and completely ignored the key "risky" part of comment.

The way it reads is that you had your feelings hurt by having your bad behavior called out and felt a need to rationalize that behavior.

>I'm pretty sure it is accurate for some subset of the driving population, which was the claim.

It might be true, but that's not the same as "accurate". Let's imagine the same thing but for cyclists:

"I saw a cyclist run a red light and I had to brake to avoid T-boning him. Apparently some cyclists hate motorists and want inconvenience them as much as possible."

I'm sure there's probably "some" radical cyclists that utterly despise motorists (think /r/fuckcars) and want to go out of their to inconvenience them, but only mentioning that as a possible reason for the behavior is at best an act of omission. There's probably some far more innocuous explanation out there, like that the cyclist thought the way was clear (because there were no cars in sight).

>You didn't actually provide any evidence or argument to dispute that claim and completely ignored the key "risky" part of comment.

It's totally fair game to criticize one aspect of a comment even if you agree with the point broadly. For instance, I might not like what facebook's privacy record, but still object to comments that claim that facebook is bad for privacy because it's surreptitiously listening on people's phones.

> It might be true, but that's not the same as "accurate". Let's imagine the same thing but for cyclists:

I don't understand the disctinction you are trying to draw here. The statement itself is both accurate and true? At best the implication might be slightly hyperbolic but definitely not a "cartoonishly evil caricature."

> There's probably some far more innocuous explanation out there, like that the cyclist thought the way was clear (because there were no cars in sight).

Except your explanation is also not innocuous. Not wanting to be behind a bicycle is non an excuse for dangerous passing and especially when you are approaching a red light. The fact that you think this is an acceptable reasoning for that behavior is why you're being called out and downvoted. None of your excuses for how this might cause a light cycle to trigger sooner make this acceptable behavior.

Sibling commenter covered most of what I have to say but the other reason this is wrong is because many bicycles can go 20-30mph, and I'm just going to leapfrog you anyway at the red light you're racing me to wait at.

Other times cars try to kill me to save themselves a few seconds:

1. turning right into a parking lot ahead of me

2. turning right out of the parking lot ahead of me

3. rushing to open their driver's side door right in front of me so they can get out and get to their destination faster

I've had a crash for #1 and #3, so this isn't theoretical. Watch for bicycles.

>Sibling commenter covered most of what I have to say but the other reason this is wrong is because many bicycles can go 20-30mph, and I'm just going to leapfrog you anyway at the red light you're racing me to wait at.

Right, but the whole premise of this thread is that the lights only turn green after a car approaches. If you overtake the bicycle so you can get there 5s faster, then the light will turn green 5s faster. Sure, whether risking an overtake to save 5s might be questionable, but is at least a more understandable reason than "Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them", which makes it sound like the driver can't stand being #2.

You are not held up by a cyclist riding at 10mph if your average speed is at 5mph because of the traffic lights.

Besides there is a good chance you are the one holding up the cyclists creating a mini traffic jam with fellow drivers at every traffic lights.

>You are not held up by a cyclist riding at 10mph if your average speed is at 5mph because of the traffic lights.

At a normal traffic light, maybe. But the whole premise of this thread is that the lights that only turn green when a car is approaching.

>Besides there is a good chance you are the one holding up the cyclists creating a mini traffic jam with fellow drivers at every traffic lights.

???

the original statement was that drivers do it all the time, wether the traffic light might pass green or not.

Many cyclists slow down when they see a traffic light being red with a lane of stopped car in front. Because cyclists understand physics and drivers are generally bad at anticipating events.. Almost universally a driver try a quick pass to brake check the cyclists and stop in front of the cyclist while it would be more efficient for both of them to gently slow down instead of stopping so they still have speed when the light go green.

> Seems like the far more plausible reason is that drivers don't want to be held up by a cyclist traveling at 10mph in front of them?

Their reasoning is as follows:

see cyclist -> cyclist always slow -> must always overtake cyclist

Empirically, 99% of drivers act according to this simplistic model. They do not take the situation at hand into consideration at all, they simply always try to overtake cyclists.

The speed the cyclist is going at doesn't matter, the upcoming intersection/roundabout/traffic jam does not matter, the minimum legal (and safe!) distance from the cyclist while overtaking does not matter.

Oops, I forgot something: This is all assuming good faith. Alternative scenario:

"How DARE that cyclist slow ME down! Get off the road!" -> punish pass / coal rolling on purpose

The faster you get your car to the inductive sensor in the road, the faster the lights change.

And plenty of turning lanes in New Zealand will not trigger the green turning arrow unless a car is waiting. If you don't get onto the sensor before the phase completes for the cross traffic, then you need to wait a full phase of lights before the green arrow is enabled (which can be quite a while, depending on pedestrians and other turning lanes etc).

It depends on time of day and wether cars coming the other direction are waiting to turn.

A few intersections are very cycle unfriendly, because they separate induction sensors for cycles are not installed for all lanes.

Not saying that your explanation is wrong, just saying that in some circumstances, hooning up to the light can reduce wait times for drivers.

The same thing can happen when walking (pressing the pedestrian cross button in time can reduce the waiting time before you can cross), or cycling (sometimes you need to get onto the cycle induction sensor to get the green cycle lights faster).

> people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane

It happens when they are yielding to someone behind that's going faster than them. It's quite common here in Europe.

I don't understand this. There is a red light. You will have to stop. Why do people still cross a solid line (which will get you a fine if police sees you) to overtake me and then stop directly in front of me? It makes no sense.

It's even worse when they overtake me and stop in front of me at an intersection with two lanes where they could just stay in the fucking lane they used to overtake me.

I swear some driver are doing it on purpose because they hate everyone else on the road.

Sounds like a great way to train people to run red lights. God only knows how many different industries best practices are being violated by that.

Sounds like they never heard of Goodhart's law. They rigged a system which measures behavior (distance of approaching vehicle) and tied it to decision making (controlling a traffic light) in order to create an incentive toward a certain desired behavior. That's a prime example of something where people will learn the system and game it to optimize their own advantage instead of the desired behavior.

Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.

In the US, there’s a thing called the Opticom. It’s just an extra light that is installed along with the normal light bar, and the traffic light recognizes the strobe pattern, and changes. https://www.fedsig.com/product/opticom/

No app required.

But highly susceptible to unauthorized use. The app version can also alert drivers directly with an audible alert that an emergency vehicle is close by

Fixable by taking a picture of every opticom user?

Or by doing even a slight amount of encoding of the IR signal. Transmitting a single byte as a key (set by region, same as fire dept. elevator keys) would be enough to prevent people from using their TV remote controls or whatever to trip the preempt sensors.

That being said, this is kind of a non-issue already, I have heard a story about someone abusing the preempt sensors like 10 years ago and never since then. Maybe there already exists an encoding scheme.

Anecdotal of course, but in my 20 years of driving I've never once seen a vehicle activate the red light override sensors that wasn't obviously a legitimate emergency vehicle.

IMO a huge majority of people realize how illegal it would be to mess with these things, and the risk/reward is very low. Anyone who would take that risk would probably just run a red light instead.

It’s a pretty serious federal crime to impersonate an emergency vehicle at those. So definitely worth just running the red.

Long ago I used to read i-hacked.com with great interest. They had an article about a DIY "MIRT" which produced the right infrared signal to trigger these:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060317013200/http://www.i-hack...

Of course this article came with many disclaimers that to actually do this would be very illegal.

I was more than a little sad when I typed i-hacked.com into the browser and got redirected to some etsy page. Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine, I guess.

Not really a real problem that actually happens, but you could fix it by only making it work with visible light pulses. Sure, people still might use it illegally, but you couldn’t be very subtle about it.

What are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?

At least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.

The concern was related to being able to know where emergency vehicles were. If you build a system that announces to traffic light “I’m police/fire/EMS, coming through”, you also build an early warning system for criminals and terrorists who either want to avoid or target you.

That doesn't make any sense. How would criminals know even if the traffic light receives a signal like that?

I think these systems used RF before, so anything in the vicinity could listen in. That said, if this new system is a phone app, it'll just be using phone data instead, so it'd be hard for that to be intercepted.

No, it would be _easier_ for them to intercept, because now there's a central server you need to access to know about ALL units within the country.

If we are assuming terrorists that can get real time access to government servers, we should assume they will access the servers used by the dispatchers and so can find out when an emergency vehicle leaves and where its destination is.

That is probably more useful for planning an attack on emergency vehicles.

Although why even bother with servers? Just call in a fake emergency (or cause a real emergency) at a place of your choosing, and the government will send emergency vehicles to you.

I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI...

I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong.

Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.

Thanks for sharing that link. The categories suggest that this system is mainly used to give priority to certain kinds of vehicles. Public transport and emergency vehicles already had a system to turn lights green, so this seems like an addition to extend the system to "milder" priority vehicles like construction without giving them access to the previous system.

The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.

As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections.

The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.

> The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.

It depends on the city, but unless you're on the highway or about to enter one, a traffic light here can be assumed to serve bikes.

I found that link a few years ago thanks to an app I used when I went to university: https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-gr... The municipality has an app that will integrate with the iVRI system to have traffic lights turn green faster for bikes. It doesn't do anything for cars, it's built purely to try to convince more people not to travel by car.

Of course, iVRI data providing information about incoming bicycles don't automatically reprogram traffic lights to give them priority. However, the information is available. I've had the Enschede app trigger a "this app requested X green lights during your ride" popup in other cities; I'm pretty sure it's just an iVRI integration, not one restricted by a specific municipality.

"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.

I guess they just want to collect movements of all their citizens, and this is their way to get at the data.

Belgium has intelligent traffic lights already. You can't use an app system like this without existing smart traffic light infrastructure.

This just allows for better traffic flow management by predicting influxes of traffic along long roads.

But, more importantly, it allows traffic planners to analyze popular sources/destinations on the road map. If 90% of cars turn left at a certain traffic light but only because the traffic light before it takes forever to turn green, they can tweak the scheduling to divide traffic more evenly.

The obvious downside, of course, is that this data will quickly show individuals when analyzing patterns in remote areas.

Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Install my app to turn on the lights, install the app to see the menu at a restaurant, install the app to read information about an archaeological site, install an app to open the automatic doors.

As you said, it's 100% the wrong approach.

You will soon be unable to cross the intersection unless you manually turn the light green from your mobile phone or wait until another authorised driver does it, in order to protect the children

> Everyone wants you to install their app these days.

Except that's not what they want here. What they want is for the apps that most people already use to add support for this.

I know, and it's frankly better. They didn't make an app, they made a protocol.

I think many in the comments are misunderstanding how this works, perhaps because it's not clearly explained, but my understanding is that they want to integrate with your navigation software so that they can predict (based on the routes of drivers navigating with a supported app) when certain vehicles will reach certain lights and adjust the timing so as not to cause traffic to have to slow down.

The only way to do this effectively is with a planned route, and hence why they need to use an app (the one you're using to navigate/route plan with) and why having the main navigation apps people tend to use (e.g. Waze, GMaps) is desirable.

Demand traffic lights using a loop sensor that can pick up a car through magnetism are nothing new. They can be a problem for cyclists because many bikes don't have enough metal.

There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road.

They retimed it so this didn't work anymore.

Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed for emergency services first, but is now expanded.

That seems an over-engineered, highly expensive and complicated to maintain on a road-lifetime scale system

Taxi drivers might have said the same thing about Uber.

These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established, and projects like this become possible precisely because they’re not that complicated to build or maintain. They take advantage of common infrastructure, and can often be cheaper than supposedly “simpler” alternatives.

> These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established

And as a side effect, we get very funny cyber-security news weekly!

How many news did we get recently about such "tech" products becoming disabled because 2G was gone, because the app was gone, ... Road lights should last 20+ years, no app/connected system will last that long.

Google Maps is 20 years old.

The connectivity at the traffic lights can be a small box, easily replaced, much more cheaply than e.g. traffic sensors under the road.

If the system fails for some reason, such as an internet outage, traffic lights can fall back to ordinary timing.

You’re not raising serious objections.

Doing this with existing apps is probably a lot cheaper than installing cameras and traffic counting loops on every side of every intersection, which would be the alternative to this.

The smart traffic light management systems are already in place in many intersections already, this is just hooking another source of traffic information into the system without having to dig open concrete or asphalt.

Late at night, at a friends house, and his car died, but I need a ride to my car.

So, we took his motorcycle.

We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way.

Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat.

Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back.

This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red.

Curses.

We just ran that one.

In Wisconsin, motorcycles, bikes, etc. are sometimes allowed to run a red if they wait for 45s and there's no other traffic around: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/vi/37...

> So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button [...] the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way.

You mean the button for pedestrians to pass the crosswalk I guess? Why would it say "WALK" (be green for pedestrians?) and also be green for a vehicle to pass? The crosswalks around me are the reverse, if pedestrians can pass, no vehicles can pass, and vice-versa. Or maybe I misunderstood something?

Perestrians going in the same direction as traffic will generally get a walk signal when the traffic gets a green light.

I've been pondering this since the 90's. In my imagination the ultimate form is to have an auction with auto-bidding and minimum bids. If you haven't money you configure the app to collect only with a low minimum bid. When wealthy you have everyone wait for you. For example: From one direction 20 cars are approaching the crossing. Only 1 from the other direction. From the 20 car direction the highest minimum bid is 5 euro. For the single car to get priority they would have to pay 100 euro. The money goes in the other drivers account.

Manual control is also possible. The wait time is displayed on the dash along with the fee. If the fee is below the configured maximum you can press a green button, if there are no higher auto-bids the light will turn green. If there are the fee increases for you to press the button again.

It would finally provide a fun game for people with high testosterone issues so that they can assert their dominance by handing out free money. That you own a fancy car doesn't mean you get to go first, I have more money than you therefore you should wait while watching me cross the crossing. The old lady behind the Bentley also gets 500 euro in her account.

Pay people to wait at intersections. What could go wrong?

As far as emergency vehicles go, we have had a system in place, around here, for years, where the vehicles have some kind of infrared device that forces the light green.

Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn.

I think there's also a black market for the devices for impatient drivers.

>Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn.

My local (EU) ER/ A+E hospital flashes up messages like "child emergency...all doctors called", "car accident, patient due in", "stroke victim, just admitted", and everyone just goes "ahhhh, fuck", and waits longer.

I'd love to know the significant time lost, as a percentage of your life, with regards to the amount of time an ambulance could possibly delay you.

Not a big deal at all. Maybe 30 seconds at a time.

Whenever I hear sirens, I always think "Someone is having a worse day than I am."

Around here, we are pretty solicitous of emergency vehicles. We pull over, or don't enter an intersection, if we hear sirens. Every now and then, some inflamed hemorrhoid cuts off the fire truck, but it's rare.

In Melbourne, Australia, a long time ago, they embedded weight sensors in the road for a lot of intersections, so they can react dynamically to traffic conditions.

I live in Berlin, which doesn't have such sensors and it's always frustrating waiting for lights to change when there's no traffic.

Are you sure they're using weight sensors? AFAIK wire loops seem much more useful, plus they have the advantage of also picking up bikes and other lightweight traffic more accurately.

I can also tell you that even in a country with sensors all over the place, I do sometimes end up waiting on an intersection with no traffic. I assume it's some kind of public transportation/emergency vehicle priority system activating, or maybe it's an attempt to calm traffic downstream where loads of traffic has piled up already so intersections don't get blocked.

Either way, adding sensors doesn't necessarily make traffic lights immune to unnecessary waiting times.

From what I've heard, they don't always use the sensors; sometimes they're on a fixed schedule during the day and on request only overnight. Or they might be a fixed schedule always; a classmate at uni did a project around modelling traffic flow and found an intersection or two that turned out to be configured differently from how the council expected; probably a setting that was changed once and never revisited.

I've seen this happen as well, but on different time slots. I think some of it is intentional (the algorithm designed to regulate busy intersections across an entire main road probably doesn't work well when there are only a few people on the road). The ones that operate on a timer all day every day seem to be bugged out, though.

No traffic light uses weight sensors.

In Eindhoven, NL, there is a similar system without app. At night traffic lights are red by default, if sensors in the pavement detect an approaching car they turn green in time. If there are no other cars you never have to stop. Great system and has been there for a decade at least.

Why does this need to be an app at all? Wouldn't it be simpler and more accurate to just use computer vision or other sensors? Isn't this just a cartoonishly obvious ploy to get you to install some malware on your phone that tracks where you go and when?

250 intersections covered is nothing at all, I'm absolutely not surprised that private companies don't want to dedicate resources to interfacing with such a minuscule system.

I went into the article assuming we were talking about the (illegal) Mobile Infrared Transmitters (MIRTs?) that were something like the phreaker "boxes" (somehow I thought they were called "Chrome boxes" but I can't find a reference now). (I'm pretty sure the U.S. emergency vehicles still have those — for which of course they are legal.)

I wish we would install beg buttons for drivers instead. Pedestrians keep drawing the short end of the stick in Flanders.

Isn’t this what Car2X was supposed to do?

In amsterdam there are traffic light systems that prioritize their green phases and rhythms according to the number of traffic participants. For example, streetcars have priority 1, then buses, bicycles and finally cars. This works via weight or pressure sensors. No camera or app.

I am waiting for the day when every red light is a micro-auction to stop cross traffic sooner.

Just installing this in my car so I always get a green light:

https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff...

Surprised by the negativity here. This sort of predictive/automated traffic is a pretty clear win without a corresponding downside. Worst case scenario for all drivers is more or less same as dumb lights with fair bit of time saving potential

I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.

If Google Maps had broadcast your individual(!) position and navigation intent to the local government people would scream about privacy. I'm not sure it's better when a local app does it.

I think I'd be more comfortable sharing my location with the Belgian government than with Google.

It hardly seems like the Flemish government are going to create an app that's a serious competitor to Google Maps etc. Even just reaching something reasonably functional for driving directions would be an awful lot of work.

There are some good open-source apps for driving directions. The big problem with those apps is often the lack of a source for live traffic information, but the government probably has something for that already, so hooking that up into an open-source app should be quite effective. Shouldn't be too hard to advertise an app if it means you see more green lights on your journey.

these traffic apps would have a lot more uptake if the options included labeling and graphics like used in classic games ......" The spell of passage", and for observing varios trafic laws , earn points and free tolls for bridges and hyways or other ways to pay for permiting and licensing

So...let's give control of traffic lights to private corporations. Surely they won't figure out how to game it for profit, right?

Would this green light app be something that you would be fiddling with while driving, as you're approaching the target intersection?

Title should read : Flemish tragic agency grumpy that google wont stream all drivers position to them in real-time.

This article is just the same three sentences written in four different ways.

With all the data companies certainly have about traffic flow, it boggles my mind that there isn't a company out there selling city-wide "traffic light optimization" where they come in, analyze the data, and set the traffic lights to optimize traffic flow. Heck, sell it as a subscription where the analysis continues running and factors in things like major events or road closures automatically.

Noise and air pollution would go down. Time waiting in traffic would go down. Crashes would go down.

Of all the things that have been optimized in the worod today by algorithmic analysis of data, it just surprises me that this hasn't been one of them.

Very good idea.

But for now, those talks have not yielded any results, so you have to turn to the smaller apps.

---

THAT'S WHY YOU PATENT YOUR TECHNOLOGY!

Lmao, an app.

This is solving the wrong problem. If a traffic light can turn green at a whim, for any arriving app user, the intersection is not busy enough to have a traffic light. Then the traffic light should be removed or switched off for those times, instead of getting a very expensive (I presume) upgrade. If the intersection is busy enough so that people are waiting on all (or most) stop lines, then simpler traffic density sensors are a better, less invasive, far cheaper, and more privacy-preserving option.

> simpler traffic density sensors

…which in practice tend to be more expensive to implement and maintain. Systems like this one can work because they take advantage of highly available commodity infrastructure.

In the most cases, you should imho skip the traffic lights all together and use a roundabout. Automatically balancing, can work to large capacities (not as large as traffic lights, but visit France if you need to see how much traffic they can handle). No fragile electronics, no power consumption, less maintenance, less accident-prone (really!).

Yes roundabouts generally work well despite the fact that many American drivers seem to have problems with them.

There are some traffic patterns where roundabouts don't do well. I've seen the following. Imagine a four way roundabout with north, east, south and west. Predominate rush hour traffic is towards the east. Heavy traffic entering from north. More entering from west. Most exiting at east with very little going around beyond west. Entering from south can be nearly impossible since they're waiting for a break from both north and west.

Yeah, the US approach where low-volume traffic lights turn to flashing red (treated like a stop sign) late at night seems to work fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com