Marratxi wrote in
:

"John Rowland" wrote in
message ...

SNIP
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late
at night. Long phases at busy junctions during rush hour increase
capacity by removing the dead time when nothing is moving, but long
phases late at night are pointless. There are some traffic lights in
Harrow town centre which remain red for up to four minutes late at
night, while approximately one vehicle per minute passes in the
other direction. Is this design or incompetence? Maybe it is
supposed to deter vehicles from going through Harrow centre - but it
also delays buses, and increases taxi fares by two pounds.

SNIP

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning
"you can go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go
if no cars are crossing"? This could then be used on numerous
traffic lights late at night. It would also improve safety on
roundabouts which currently have the traffic lights switched off
outside the peak - at the moment there is no way of telling whether
the traffic light is switched off or the red bulb is blown.

Why has Britain never copied the Japanese idea of having a digital
countdown above traffic lights? Surely it would increase capacity,
and also give drivers free time to have drinks or change CDs instead
of staring at the red light.

Oh how I agree with you !!!! Nothing more annoying than being stopped
for several minutes in the early hours of the morning by a red light
when you can see quite clearly that there isn't another vehicle on
the road for miles.

This happened to me: I took a wrong turning down a dead end late at night
and then found that the traffic lights to let me out at the junction had
stuck on red. After waiting about five minutes with no other cars coming, I
decided to apply a bit of common sense. I crawled forwards, flashing my
headlights - it was after 11 PM so sounding my horn would have been illegal!
And bugger me a police car came along just as I got to the other side of the
junction. With much wailing of sirens (a brief flash of his blue lights
would have sufficed!) he signalled me to stop - which I was already
preparing to do anyway. In the standard patronising tone which treats people
as if they have a mental age of five, he started to say that he had "reason
to believe" that I'd just gone through a red light. "Yes," I said. "It's
been stuck on red for five minutes with no cars coming and it's a dead end."
He didn't believe me, so I suggested he might like to drive down there and
try to get out again without going through a red light. And he did! With his
mate keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn't bugger off, he actually
drove down there, turned round and realised that he couldn't get out again.
Eventually he put on his blues and twos to give him an excuse to go through
the light. "Well you *did* warn me!" he confessed, finally seeing the funny
side of it.

When I asked him how long one should wait at a red light before assuming
it's got stuck, he said he didn't know - but five minutes, late at night
when there's nothing coming, was probably long enough - it seems I'd done
the right thing.