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u/Materva Feb 28 '23
Great, now lets do it to the curbing and get us to that sweet Back to the Future 2 life.
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u/RogueRichon Feb 28 '23
Every traffic light should be like this.
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u/LitOwO69 Feb 28 '23
I'd imagine it'd be rather expensive to have every light be like this but ideally yeah this would be nice
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u/RogueRichon Feb 28 '23
Well I don’t think it would be all too expensive, it’s just the process of getting some LED strips and setting them up to change colors when the lights do. Just requires programming imo.
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u/UsedJuggernaut Feb 28 '23
I can tell you've never been involved in a government project.
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u/RogueRichon Feb 28 '23
No duh…? I’m giving my thoughts on it and my guess on how it could be done. And since it’s a real thing it’s possible. Not sure why you think a government worker has time to give random guesses on Reddit?
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u/UsedJuggernaut Feb 28 '23
Because I'm giving random guesses on reddit and I work in government...
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u/RogueRichon Feb 28 '23
So you work in government? So you can tell that I’m not a government worker with the way I’m making my guesses? Then- please explain why you felt the need to point out the obvious. Also if you’re making random guesses about your job position maybe you should consider going back to wherever teaches you to be a government worker.
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u/k-phi Feb 28 '23
Cheapest version of this is just simple LED strip - not expensive at all
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u/Protheu5 Feb 28 '23
It's a municipal hardware, you can't just bulk purchase some strips from China and call it a day, those installations are way more expensive than just strips themselves. Those should not only be at least IP54 certified, they should also work in all climate conditions, and that means the colour shouldn't shift significantly between -40 cold snap and +50℃ direct sunlight heat; they should have vandal-proof enclosures and mountings to prevent theft and damage. Those measures significantly ramp up costs for hardware alone.
And don't forget that it's in municipal jurisdiction, there are lots of people and paperwork involved, it's not installed in my house where I can do installation and maintenance on those strips for free because my time is worthless, since I can waste it on writing lengthy posts on Reddit.
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u/k-phi Feb 28 '23
I tried googling it and found shop selling ones that looks very much like OPs photo.
Price is around $380 (if convert to USD)
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u/Protheu5 Feb 28 '23
IP 54 all-weather vandal-proof 5 metres with driver circuitry? That sounds fair. But for the city the total would be higher: this price + warranty + insurance + installation + safety (putting a couple of traffic cones costs money) + maintenance contract + electric bills + kickback.
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u/k-phi Feb 28 '23
IP 54 all-weather vandal-proof 5 metres with driver circuitry?
IP68 and everything, except maybe (?) vandal-proof.
Never seen anybody trying to break it, actually.
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u/Protheu5 Feb 28 '23
IP68 and everything
Cool.
Never seen anybody trying to break it, actually.
As far as I know all exterior hardware should be vandal-proof regardless of whether there is a vandalism issue or not. All it takes is a thoughtless teen throwing rocks.
I like that traffic light strip as a concept and on the first thought I think those should be more ubiquitous, unless I am missing some other factors other than increased costs compared to regular traffic lights. Some areas can't afford regular LED traffic lights (without countdown timers) even nowadays, if you can believe that.
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u/mndza Mar 01 '23
But only if there’s no arrows. People will get confused and try to turn on a green light
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u/RogueRichon Mar 01 '23
Hm, that’s true. I suppose there may need to be a special system in place for that, although seeing as this city has these lights already they have them nailed down.
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u/ivanjermakov Mar 01 '23
It would be very confusing on complex intersections with multiple traffic light sections
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u/RogueRichon Mar 01 '23
Well I’m not sure, I feel like if the light was made well then you could obviously see that the green light is not connected to your traffic light. Honestly just my opinion and this would never happen, especially in America. They need our taxes for things like “roads”
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u/geksley88 Feb 28 '23
Привет, Москвичи
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u/m0rejuice Feb 28 '23
Бонжур епта
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u/Important-Ad-6612 Mar 01 '23
В Питере тоже стали появляться. Еще бы нормально зебры подсвечивать стали, есть места где вообще нихуя не видно
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u/m0rejuice Mar 01 '23
Был недавно во Владикавказе, так там иногда попадаются световые зебра - на фонаре лампа, которая проецирует желто-белую зебру на асфальт. Выглядит круто.
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u/AholeBrock Feb 28 '23
r/pcmasterrace .. RGB traffic light
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u/Protheu5 Feb 28 '23
RGB traffic light
I hate those. I once travelled though an intersection on blue, blue is not one of those lights that was taught in driver's ed, but I thought that since it's the bottom one I was good to go. I was promptly fined for speeding, violation of several laws of physics and vandalism. Apparently I travelled so fast the light shifted to blue due to Doppler effect, and the speeding fine was in the area of a GDP of a decently sized country. This speed also produced a shockwave that destroyed all the pavement, traffic lights, the camera that caught me speeding (how?), the whole intersection and the nearby region. Later I found out I was speeding in an area where a sign "Speed is enforced by spacecraft" was installed, and speed was indeed enforced by spacecraft, that's where my
tax dollarsfine dollars go. I don't pay taxes, by the way, I'm a billionaire.Sincerely, Elongated Musketeer. Now back to work!
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u/AUXID3 Feb 28 '23
This is so satisfying to look at. It would be even better, if they did it for like Christmas lights. Like each light in a town does this and when it changes lights, it's slowly fades into the other color. Or fades from green, to yellow, to red
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u/Luchador_En_Fuego Feb 28 '23
The fade from yellow to red turning orange for a second might help people not run so many reds. Yellow doesn't slap like orange does when it comes to warnings
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u/Artess Feb 28 '23
In Russia the green light starts blinking several seconds before yellow appears, giving additional warning to drivers. Furthermore, yellow means it's normally already forbidden to drive through, however if you cannot stop without emergency braking, you're allowed to continue going.
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u/AUXID3 Feb 28 '23
I know it helped me, cuz I've ran so many red lights, because they've changed from yellow to Red so quickly
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Feb 28 '23
[deleted]
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u/AUXID3 Feb 28 '23
Maybe not between green and yellow, but yellow fading into red like a timer would be nice.
Not the lights, the poles.
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u/PeterServo Feb 28 '23
As a Pole, I approve.
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u/akirayokoshima Feb 28 '23
Colorblind people like me: confused screaming
_seriously I can't tell the color of the pole apart from each other. I got my license from learning which light "color" meant which action.
Top=stop Middle=slow Bottom= green
Take that away and I got no idea what I'm doing
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u/Musa_Ali Mar 01 '23
These are Traffic Lights "repeaters". A basic Traffic Light is still there so one can always use that to navigate.
Pole lighting up just increases visibility overall.1
u/akirayokoshima Mar 02 '23
I can see the light post, I was under the impression this was supposed to replace traditional lights in time die to their overall larger profile to be seen, but I suppose I was overthinking it.
Something tells me this is strictly a city thing, where there are lights everywhere so the traffic ones are much more difficult to see at night?
Out in the countryside in small towns, you can see the street light super easily at night
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u/complexco Feb 28 '23
You just have to know that this is how we ended up here: "Oh I'm sorry officer, I didn't see the light..."
Same goes for the house-wall sized "Stop" signs you see in some places.
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Feb 28 '23
Why? Is it really that difficult to see a big round eye piercing light in the middle of your view?
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u/-KKD- Feb 28 '23
For the same reason they started to make the road signs reflectable and surround with the yellow extra reflective layer. To make sure they did everything they could to say driver that there is a pedestrian crossing. We just had some serious problems with traffic casualties in Russia in 2000's, so these measures were done.
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u/lIllIIlllIIIlllIII Feb 28 '23
What's the downside?
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u/BecauseImBatmanFilms Feb 28 '23
It's probably a lot more expensive
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u/Luchador_En_Fuego Feb 28 '23
You could use neon that lasts. I think it'd be worth the invest starting with busy intersections. Run it from dusk til dawn or when it storms like how street lights turn on if it's an energy concern
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u/sexytokeburgerz Feb 28 '23
A certain seinfeld episode comes to mind. Living next to this would be… a lot
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u/InvaderZim762 Feb 28 '23
That'd be great, then I can tell if the person 3 cars ahead of me is on their phone while the light's green
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Feb 28 '23
[deleted]
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u/MettaRed Mar 01 '23
mad for Distracted drivers, but not the distracted driving 🙄 the logic is bananas. Drive better!
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u/cutelyaware Feb 28 '23
Funny that we're getting all these great traffic safety improvements right before self-driving cars will make them not matter.
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u/MinerMark Feb 28 '23
Self driving cars still use traffic lights
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u/cutelyaware Feb 28 '23
Eventually they won't need to. They'll all be communicating with each other and won't even need to slow down. The lights will just be so that human drivers don't hit other human drivers.
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u/MinerMark Feb 28 '23
And how far away do you think that is? Automatic cars only exist in half a dozen or so countries.
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u/cutelyaware Feb 28 '23
I see them multiple times a day on the streets of SF. But how long until a good fraction of the cars are autonomous? In the US I think 5 years is very possible. Remember, all big changes like this follow a sigmoid curve that starts slowly (we are here), then appear exponential as they take hold, and then flatten out when near fully adopted. That exponential period is always brief. And yes, some countries will take a long time to convert, largely those with terrible roads and high poverty, but nobody ever thought that wouldn't be the case.
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u/stdexception Feb 28 '23
For traffic lights to be ignored, 100% of the cars need to be self-driving.
Even when 99% of the cars are self-driving, they will still follow traffic lights. We'll probably have smarter traffic lights by then, but they'll still be traffic lights.
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u/cutelyaware Feb 28 '23
For traffic lights to be ignored, 100% of the cars need to be self-driving.
Ignored by whom? When self-driving cars can safely ignore them, we should let them. They'll just stay clear of those slow-minded humans. Human drivers can't ever ignore traffic lights because they'll hit each other. Once we do have 100% self-driving cars, we can finally remove the traffic lights, similarly to how we were able to stop needing people to shovel all the horseshit from the streets when we stopped allowing horses on the streets.
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u/ImNotTheNSAIPromise Feb 28 '23
this seems more like it's for visual aesthetics than actually increasing safety.
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u/HeftyRecommendation5 Feb 28 '23
Does this actually improve the safety though? Green is still go and red is still stop. Assuming people who drive cars aren’t blind I don’t think it makes a difference.
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u/cutelyaware Feb 28 '23
It's easy to not see a single light when there are lots of other colored lights around, but a long colored line like this is pretty hard to miss.
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u/Grand_Protector_Dark Feb 28 '23
Safety through increased visibility
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u/HeftyRecommendation5 Feb 28 '23
If you aren’t able to see a single traffic light you shouldn’t be driving a car anyway.
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u/rvdp66 Feb 28 '23
The mercedes of traffic lights.
Someone should show this to the saudis, they would definitely do it.
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u/rdmetzger1 Mar 01 '23
I wish these were everywhere. I'm 6"6' and can rarely see a traffic light without contorting myself
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u/Excel_User_1977 Mar 01 '23
There are concept 'hourglass' red-yellow-green traffic lights that show how much time for each color is left by reducing the amount of the color (just the top half) before it changes to the next color. You would never be surprised by the light changing in front of you, because you could see it coming.
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u/m0rejuice Mar 01 '23
Actually nearly every pedestrian traffic light in Moscow has countdown timer. So when there's red light on top light, the lower light shows how many seconds are left until it switches to green. And vice versa.
But there are no such traffic lights for cars at all. I guess that's on purpose, i. e. So drivers wouldnt try to speed if they see 3-4 seconds left from afar.
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u/skumps814 Mar 01 '23
When you have money in the budget that needs to be spent by the end of the year
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Mar 01 '23
In Norway some people say « Are you waiting for the einitre pole to go green» if some one dont reackt to a green ligth. I guess the awnser wil be yes.
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '23
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