- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
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The main street for all the businesses in a nearby city is set up so you can hit all green lights going down the road from 2pm-~6pm, however if you get caught at a SINGLE light, you’re going to hit reds all the way down.
So it’s become “oh that light is about to change better engage T U R B O M O D E and speed 20mph over the limit to beat this light and stay with the greens” which turns out very predictably at least once a month.
Last week a car rolled twice while speeding up to beat the light and clipped an ambulance coming from another street.
The DOT planning department I worked for (in the 80s) had studies showing that synchronizing the lights 10-15mph ABOVE the speed limit kept traffic flowing “optimally” to minimize congestion without having to expand the infrastructure (mostly: lanes). Even today I see city traffic lights synchronized mostly +10mph over the posted limit in the direction of highest flow on major arteries - you can tell when you “make” one yellow light, then lock in cruise control at limit+10 and “make” the next 3+ lights at exactly the same flash of yellow as you approach.
They do this to delay improvement projects like additional lanes, straightening curves, etc. by showing a higher “level of service” for the roadway than they would have with the lights synchronized at, say: speed limit -10mph. If you’re talking about a 45mph roadway, moving the cars at 55mph instead of 35mph means 157% as many vehicles per hour at the same spacing, and we all know that people don’t actually increase following distances at higher speeds, so… it’s a real, and significant difference. Not as significant as getting people to carpool, or take public transit, but that’s about as likely to happen as increasing following distances.
It’s a good thing to have more green lights, because emissions drop a lot. A few cities in my area spent a lot of money in the 1970s to do that. But the problem is that they sync at 30, and also at higher speeds.
Fix road design so that people don’t speed. A six lane stroad signals a limit considerably higher than 40kph, no matter what you do with the stoplights.
Wait, you mean the thing where people who do the speed limit have to stop at 3 straight reds while people doing 15 over are able to squeeze through all of them is the result of an intentional choice? It irritates the hell out of me how often that kind of thing happens in my town, but I always thought it was just some kind of oversight or inefficiency on the part of the engineers who set up the timing cycles, given how how clearly and directly it incentivizes speeding…
If driving the speed limit is the most efficient way to get where you’re trying to go, people will tend to drive the speed limit. Seems like that should be pretty obvious, imo.
Anything except public transportation
Never been a fan of the “we shouldn’t make the smaller, easier improvements because we need to do the bigger, harder things instead” argument…
Yes, we need more and better public transit, but that is going to take a whole lot of time, money, and effort to work towards. Yes, it’s worthwhile, and we shouldn’t STOP working towards it because of this, but I don’t think that’s a reason to balk at a smaller, easier incremental change that encourages safer driving while also simply being more efficient.
For public transportation in the US you need medium density living. So you’re talking about getting everyone on board and uprooting everyone as you upgrade cities or build new cities for that.
“Anything except making incremental improvements that are practical instead of doing nothing because the preferred goal is impossible, at least practically impossible” - not as catchy, I admit :P
Do you want traffic lights to only turn every 5-10 minutes? Lights were always going to be changing more than transit was arriving, if altering how it changes slows speeding drivers why wouldn’t you want that?
I don’t want traffic lights. If you design your cities properly (with no personal cars) traffic lights are not needed at all. Outside cities traffic lights don’t make sense anyways, intersections there are better off as roundabouts.
Sounds great, but I don’t live there and do have to deal with drivers and traffic lights, and I would like to implement whatever measures will slow them down. If the first and easiest is altering traffic light patterns, cool, do it. I’m supposed to not want this?
It depends on whether this is about retiming existing lights (which is relatively cheap) or building new ones. Retiming existing lights is fine, building new ones just shows that engineers don’t care about the problem and would rather waste millions of $ on a non-solution.
I don’t see anything in the article about building more lights, just altering the timing so that the default light state is red instead of green.
…or what if we actually punish people who pilot their two-ton death machines irresponsibly?
Remember, though: if the punishment is a fine, then to the rich, it’s not a punishment. It’s a price.
If it scales with income, it stays a punishment.
If it scales with wealth. The rich are very good at hiding their income.
You don’t even have to be rich-rich. Car-related fines are a joke.
I was thinking more along the lines of losing one’s license.
Indeed, though I would suggest that, for more significant infractions, state seizure of the vehicle (as the tool used to commit the crime) should be an option, with proceeds from vehicle sales by the state going to safety infrastructure and perhaps a victim restitution fund.
People are very attached to their cars, so that’s a punishment, and they won’t be needing it anymore without a license!
Punishment doesn’t prevent behavior that already happened and is usually missed. Road modifications help every time.
My town has a major road that was one of the most infuriating and dangerous in town. It was two lanes in each direction, constant jockeying for position or to make the light or to get around a turning car.
All it took was repainting. Now it’s one lane in each direction with turning lanes. There is no jockeying for position since it’s only one lane. But turning cars are no longer blocking so no infuriating stop and go. They even coordinated the lights.
Now that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time
Almost all commenters find some problem with this, but I have seen this work on my own dad who unfortunately prefers going 10kph over the speed limit most of the time. Either the traffic lights are timed in sequence or sensors are placed so that with low traffic, lights stay red until a car approaches and the light is timed with the location of the sensor for going the speed limit. The last one also allows pedestrian and bike lights to stay green when there isn’t any car traffic.
Another solution is to go back to actually enforcing it in a meaningful way.
Also you can’t get all lights everywhere synced up that way, and it would only work in places that have a significant number of lights. Places that have 3 on Main Street are still going to have problems.
I’ve seen lights with sensors several blocks back that will turn red if you’re going too fast.
Sounds like an amazing solution! Unfortunately, like with almost every way to try to control dangerous driving, it will probably lead to more deaths because dangerous drivers will now be running the reds.
Did a speeding driver write this?
just make all lights green. problem solved
How about just magnetic sensors near intersections that count how many cars are approaching and do some math to decide what would be the most efficient. If no cars coming in the cross streets then dont turn the light red in the opposite direction.
Nothing angers drivers more than sitting through a full cycle and nobody used the green.
This can be solved with sensors and math.
No fucking AI in my traffic lights!
Nah. The trick to stop speeding drivers is to stop listening to drivers whine about the solutions to speeding.
Put a speed camera on every block, and have automated tickets put points on your license like any other ticket. Start revoking habitual speeders’ licenses and word will get around.
Or just put a GPS linked governor on energy car on the road as a condition of keeping its registration active, and use that to make speeding actually impossible.
Whole worlds of options open up when you stop caring that it will make the ecocidal narcissists sad.
You’re seriously advocating for an authoritarian surveillance state?
sees lemmy.ml
Ah, that explains it.
Eh. Maybe reduce a few, but not stop.
Some people like being at the back of whatever pack of cars are in front of them, so they speed up to tailgate.
