Tech for Timing Stop Lights

It’s amazing how much a simple change in behavior in a large group of individuals can have a drastic effect on the world. A prime example would be the efforts by UPS to reduce left hand turns. With this simple thought in mind while designing their routes, they saved three million gallons of gas a year and who knows how many man-hours waiting for traffic.

Now Audi has come up with a system for helping drivers know how fast they should be driving to avoid having to stop at red lights. In the end, implementing such a system will get us all to our destinations faster and with less fuel. No more waiting in that big line of parked cars, and then having to get all that steel moving from a dead stop. That gets everyone through the intersection faster, so the cross traffic can go sooner as well, so there will be fewer red lights in the first place.

The system communicates wirelessly with the traffic lights in order to figure out how much longer they have in their cycle. I can’t help but think they have overcomplicated things by requiring an add on to cars. Now that they have LCD traffic lights, they should also put a visible countdown right in the lights.