Or especially at 2 in morning when the side road only goes into a
supermarket.

Perhaps councils and the like should be forced to put in intelligent
lights that have sensors (and ones that work!) rather than going for
the cheap and cheerful fixed phase option. By all means operate fixed
timing in peak periods (and the sensor can automatically detect when
this is) but having to wait any time at all during the night is stupid.
It encourages people to jump, with potentially disasterous results if
there are any people wandering about (quite possibly drunk or not quite
with it).

I also cannot understand why we don't have all lights set on red at
night (would be stupid in peak periods). When a car approaches, the
appropriate road changes to green. This means there's not even a delay
as the other side goes back to red (usually the primary road) and
pedestrians don't need to wait if they get there first either.

Sweden has always had this (well, at least since I was a kid - and I'm
31), and Denmark have the countdown timer on lights. They've also used
LED traffic lights for ages, even though I remember the Highways Agency
going on about how good they were a few years ago - and still today we
have virtually none in operation (often a secondary light at a junction
or roundabout). Illuminated cats eyes have also never taken off, even
though the ones near Nazeing, Essex are fantastic (but clearly
expensive) and must be a major boost to road safety at night on country
roads.

The good old UK likes to lag behind, and then we claim to be the first
because our new system is slightly improved/different (one extra LED in
the light means we're first to have lights with 301 diodes instead of
300).

Next time Tesco build a new store, or a new retail park opens, I bet
any road junction built gets cheap and annoying lights that will
continue to hold you up at 2am. If you're really 'lucky', they'll even
bung in a Red Light camera to make some money from those who don't want
to wait!

Jonathan

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:01:58 +0100, "Marratxi"
wrote:


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.

Yes there is. That police car, just round the corner :-)

They won't nick you for creeping through a light that's been read for
several minutes. But you'd better have a fully legal vehicle, and not
have had a drink :-)

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, John Rowland wrote:

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"?

Good idea.

I'm not entirely sure about using flashing amber, though: rightly or
wrongly, people associate amber with 'go' - and, indeed, 'go, quick!' -
which is not what you want to say here. Also, the main failure modes (in
driving rain, with your windscreen wipers thrashing about, and people's
umbrellas zipping through your line of sight) are going to be only seeing
the lit phases - and so mistaking it for a 'go' sign - or only seeing the
unlit phases, and so not seeing it at all!

I was thinking about this a while ago, and i thought that the best thing
might be to use shape - build red lights with two elements, an inverted
triangle and a circle enclosing it, like an upside-down version of this:

http://www.analyzemath.com/Geometry/...cumcircle2.gif

When you mean 'stop', light both bits; when you mean 'probably stop, but
go if nobody's coming', you light the triangle. The idea here is that the
probably-stop light looks like an illuminated version of the existing
'give way' sign, which will hopefully trigger the right behaviour in
drivers who see it. And, since it's solid red, the main failure mode is
going to be to mistake it for a circular red, which is fine - it's always
safe to stop at a probably-stop. The downside, of course, is that you need
to build entirely new, and more complex, lights.

If you want to use existing lights, then i'd say you need something which
includes a solid red: that means 'stop', giving fail-safe behaviour if a
driver misses the other element. Ideally, you'd then have another element
which doesn't mean 'go' on its own, to give fail-safety if the driver
doesn't see the red. The trouble is, there isn't anything like that - all
forms of green mean 'go' and, despite what the highway code says, so do
all forms of yellow. Perhaps a solid red + briefly flashing green would
do; the quick pulses of green wouldn't be enough to let anyone think it
was a solid green, but would be seen by a driver who was stopped at the
light.

All that said, isn't the real solution to make the lights (or rather, the
junction) sensor-controlled, or perhaps better-sensor-controlled? If the
junction knew there was a queue of cars waiting to go one way, and cars
were only a few a minute the other way, it could just change its lights to
let them through.

This could then be used on numerous traffic lights late at night.

Or at any time and place where this pattern of traffic occurs. Mostly at
night, granted.

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.

Maybe there's a worry that if people know they can go in 1 second, they'll
go right now, since it's bound to be safe, isn't it ...

tom

--
If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence
of heightened sensibility -- Peter Medawar

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...

I was thinking about this a while ago, and i thought that
the best thing might be to use shape - build red lights
with two elements, an inverted triangle and a circle
enclosing it, like an upside-down version of this:

http://www.analyzemath.com/Geometry/...cumcircle2.gif

When you mean 'stop', light both bits; when you mean
'probably stop, but go if nobody's coming', you light the
triangle. The idea here is that the probably-stop light looks
like an illuminated version of the existing 'give way' sign,
which will hopefully trigger the right behaviour in drivers
who see it. And, since it's solid red, the main failure mode
is going to be to mistake it for a circular red, which is fine -
it's always safe to stop at a probably-stop. The downside, of
course, is that you need to build entirely new, and more complex, lights.

And that after a while, people would start mistaking stop lights for give
way lights, which isn't always safe.

All that said, isn't the real solution to make the lights
(or rather, the junction) sensor-controlled, or perhaps
better-sensor-controlled? If the junction knew there
was a queue of cars waiting to go one way, and cars
were only a few a minute the other way, it could just
change its lights to let them through.

I think bicycles fail to activate the sensors, which is one reason why
cyclists habitually jump red lights. Why are these sensors so rare anyway?
Are they very expensive?

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.

Maybe there's a worry that if people know they can go in 1
second, they'll go right now, since it's bound to be safe, isn't it ...

Some drivers do that already. As a driver, I usually watch the traffic
lights for crossing traffic and pedestrians, because they give me advance
warning of when my light will go green.

Incidentally, the other week I saw a car stop at a red light, and then
slowly roll forward at about 5cm/sec until his entire car was over the stop
line. At which point the camera above the traffic light flashed and he got a
100 pound fine and three points on his license. For some reason, that made
my day.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

John Rowland wrote:
"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...

All that said, isn't the real solution to make the lights
(or rather, the junction) sensor-controlled, or perhaps
better-sensor-controlled? If the junction knew there
was a queue of cars waiting to go one way, and cars
were only a few a minute the other way, it could just
change its lights to let them through.

I think bicycles fail to activate the sensors, which is one reason
why cyclists habitually jump red lights. Why are these sensors so
rare anyway? Are they very expensive?

Good question. Back in the dark ages, when traffic levels were low,
many if not all traffic lights were controlled by rubber detector strips
set into metal frames on the road surface. Nowadays you can have either
movement detectors mounted on the lights, using presumably the same
cheap technology as in burglar alarm PIRs, or sensor wires embedded in
the top layer of the road surface. But most lights now seem to work on
a fixed time sequence.

When I lived just outside Reading, a busy cross roads near us was the
subject of Transport Research Laboratory investigations into different
phasing and sensor strategies. The final system was excellent in
responding very quickly to the actual traffic levels on each road. If
all the traffic queue in the green direction was cleared, the lights
immediately switched to the next phase. At quiet periods at night, all
lights were set to red, and an approaching vehicle would immediately
trigger a red+amber/green sequence for that direction. That was 15-20
years ago.

I'm sure the technology is cheap, and it shouldn't cause any more
disruption to install it as laying anti-skid coatings around signalled
junctions.

We also seem to have gone backwards on area control of a set of lights.
Do these schemes still exist in London? I keep being stopped,
particularly at light-controlled pedestrian crossings, in a way that sug
gests that each set of lights functions independently.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Richard J." wrote in message
o.uk...


We also seem to have gone backwards on area control of a set of lights.
Do these schemes still exist in London? I keep being stopped,
particularly at light-controlled pedestrian crossings, in a way that sug
gests that each set of lights functions independently.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Perhaps there _is_ area control of the lights, but it is programmed to stop
you as often as possible?

Paul

Paul Scott wrote in
:

"Richard J." wrote in message
o.uk...


We also seem to have gone backwards on area control of a set of
lights. Do these schemes still exist in London? I keep being
stopped, particularly at light-controlled pedestrian crossings, in a
way that sug gests that each set of lights functions independently.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Perhaps there _is_ area control of the lights, but it is programmed
to stop you as often as possible?

What happened to that set of linked traffic lights on the A4 near Slough
that was programmed to let you through if you drove at 30 mph, but to ensure
that you hit every red light in turn if you drove slower than 25 or faster
than 35? Does that still exist?

"Richard J." wrote in message
o.uk...
MAJOR SNIP !!!

We also seem to have gone backwards on area control of a set of lights.
Do these schemes still exist in London? I keep being stopped,
particularly at light-controlled pedestrian crossings, in a way that sug
gests that each set of lights functions independently.
--
Richard J.

Have you noticed how many sets of light-controlled pedestrian crossings seem
to be able to activate without any pedestrian being anywhere near ? I
suspect its just another of these expensive but useless "traffic calming"
systems installed by stealth by those "who know best"
Baz

"Richard J." wrote in message
o.uk...

We also seem to have gone backwards on area control
of a set of lights. Do these schemes still exist in London?
I keep being stopped, particularly at light-controlled
pedestrian crossings, in a way that suggests that
each set of lights functions independently.

I believe they still exist, but they can only work in one direction. If you
commute against the flow, you will likely get red after red.

Another thing - there is a pedestrian crossing in Kenton Road near the
Northwick Park roundabout which regularly goes red (to vehicles) even though
there are never any pedestrians anywhere near. Is this a malfunction or
design?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

"John Rowland" typed


Another thing - there is a pedestrian crossing in Kenton Road near the
Northwick Park roundabout which regularly goes red (to vehicles) even though
there are never any pedestrians anywhere near. Is this a malfunction or
design?

I've not tried that one. Are you sure that it doesn't make pedestrians
wait so long that they cross long before the lights stop the traffic?
There are certainly some on heavily-used routes that keep pedestrians
waiting inordinately long. (Finchley Road (A41) just south of Platts
Lane/Fortune Green Rd is one such example.)

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.