Re: changing traffic lights by the force of your personality

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 19:04:00 MST


Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> At 01:43 AM 2/9/02 +0100, Anders wrote:
>
> >Suppose each car could "vote" for the light (similarly for the
> >pedestrians at crossings). [etc]
>
> >At night, when there are few cars at all, all lights
> >would turn green since there are just single votes.
>
> Ack! No, late at night the lights would go *off* (unless a spurt of traffic
> reactivated them). You *can't* allow an intersection to show green on all
> lights.

Turning them off is the same as making them all green. Round these parts
in Cow Hampsha', after a certain o'dark hundred hour, the traffic lights
go to pulsing yellow full time....

The difficulty with making them turn green is that you really want some
advance sensor, which senses your vehicle a couple hundred yards down
the road, so it has time to turn the opposing direction yellow then red
before it gives you the green just as you arrive at the intersection. In
such cases, I try to pulse my high beams at something similar to what a
police or ambulance does, since most traffic lights have strobe sensors
now for emergency vehicles.... that usually does the trick...



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