- Published:December 29th, 2006
- Comments:1 Comment
- Category:Save the World
How many times are you driving along, just minding your own business on an empty road, just to have the stop light turn red in front of you, with no one else anywhere remotely in sight?
Being the law abiding citizen that I am, I stop for the light. Most of the time I even sit all the way through it, but I think this is about the dumbest thing in the world of traffic management, and changes here could help to contribute to less vehicle emissions.
In this time of technological advances, each stop light could be easily retro-fitted with a radar sensor that detected traffic levels in each direction at an intersection. The default would be to have the more major (if any) street be always green unless there are approaching vehicles from the other street. Then, after x period of time of these vehicles waiting (or no waiting if there isn’t cross-traffic) the lights change.
Why would this help? If you took 1 minute at each stop light away, that could add up somewhere in the 5-10 minute range of idling time eliminated per vehicle on a fairly typical short commute. This vehicle would consume less gas (an object in motion… et al.) due to less idling, and less accelerating.
Also think of the road rage reduction benefits, and lower gas consumptions over an annual period. If you’re less frustrated by the stupid stop lights and from spending so much money on fuel, you’re going to be in a better mood and less likely to start a brawl because you just got passed by a silver truck.
1 Commento
[...] I rambled earlier about how I can’t stand inefficiently timed traffic lights and how we could reduce idling emissions put out by cars just by having the lights timed better. [...]