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Ann Arbor plays home to the University of Michigan, and with the football games, Kid Rock concerts, and daily commuters comes traffic, and lots of it. On the average weekday, the 125,000-person town swells to hold 200,000 people, most of whom travel in by personal car. The city is exploring buses, commuter rail, and carpool options to clear up its roads, but knows it can't drive the car out of its home state anytime soon. So it turned to tech to manage its streets.
Intelligent traffic systems have been adjusting traffic lights and signs to smooth out congestion in real time for more than three decades, all over the world. More than 100 cities, including London, Santiago, and Toronto, use the same car-corralling program as Ann Arbor.
Now, that tech is getting smarter—and it's winning the battle. New numbers from Siemens, which co-owns the Ann Arbor program with UK company Imtech, show the city's more advanced software puts a serious dent in local traffic.
Cities program your standard traffic light by observing traffic patterns for a few hours, extrapolating what local vehicles need, and then letting lights do their thing for years, even decades. More advanced systems will be able to sense if a vehicle is stopped, and turn the light green to help it along. The most advanced systems—like Ann Arbor's—will know how many vehicles are stopped, in which lane, and how many vehicles are coming down the pike.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday March 06 2017, @06:53AM
No truer words ever said.
The one that gets me, both as driver and pedestrian, is that if a pedestrian *has* tripped the light, the light should keep the red on for a couple of seconds longer while gating the pedestrian first... that way the pedestrian is in the road - and in plain view - before the motorists are gated on. Telling them both to enter the intersection simultaneously leads to deadly surprises. There are often light poles, switch boxes, and other obstructions at intersections which conceal a pedestrian, and the motorist turning right often gets a surprise encounter with a pedestrian that wasn't there a second ago.
As a driver, I pay special attention during right turns if those pedestrian signals are blinking, as that usually indicates active pedestrian activity. I do not believe those things should be automatic, as I do not want it to become routine and a "wolf call and no wolf" kind of thing. A blinking one should mean that someone actively tripped it and is presently in the intersection. Not "might be".... "IS".
In the event of more intelligent camera supervised intersections, use the camera to verify pedestrians are cleared before telling the cars all is OK.
So many people just aren't paying attention anymore either while driving, or walking!
I have had a lot more close calls with humans than cats... Haven't nailed any yet, but I have had several too close for comfort kinda things. None were anybody's real fault - rather we both thought things were clear and made simultaneous decisions.
Honestly, most cats pay more attention before crossing the road.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]