Let’s be honest. Timing of lights is absurd. You shouldn’t have to stop at every single intersection. Proper timing would allow and clean flow of cars from one light to another. Force everyone to stop every half a mile for no reason, and you’ll have drivers try to speed to the next one. Hell, even 90 years ago they were able to do it. Yet now they can’t? And everywhere you go, is slightly different , so you have no idea what will happen at the next intersection unless you constantly drive that road
Now the lights have weight sensors, so a light will never turn red unless it needs to. There are no timing schedules to adjust to, whoever gets there 1st will help trigger it faster. On 2nd thought, if the intersection is busy enough where someone is always waiting and the lights are constantly being triggered, I guess it wouldn't be any different from the lights in this video. So yes it does help to find an even speed. Extend your brake life and get there just as fast.
As a traffic engineer that times signals, this is so frustrating. If you're the lead car, the offset to the next signal is based on you going the speed limit. When you get passed, those drivers arrive too early and cause the platoon to experience small hiccups in flow. Then everyone things the signals are timed bad...no, just go the speed limit!
So traffic light synchronization was developed in the '30s yet traffic engineers today can't figure out how to properly time lights to the speed limit?
It's harder than you would think. You can only have sensors in so many areas, someone drives in from a side street and sync is ruined, someone parks their car and the same happens. It could work if every car was required to have a transponder or GPS tracking but that's too intrusive.
I love these old films. For better or worse, they serve as an amazing reminder of how different the world was not that many years ago. That said, it's kind of amazing that the traffic lights used 75 years ago look almost identical to today's. The drivers apparently weren't much different either....
No, the drivers were much worse. Most of them grew up in the days of horse and carriages, so were much more likely to treat things like driving on the right side of the road as a suggestion.
Programming traffic light systems isn't much different to the cams and contact systems either, you can have cam timers displayed in software for the PLCs used for light control now.
One thing that's neat with these old lights, is the red+amber and the green+amber. I don't know when they stopped doing that, or if some places still do it.
In Poland we get red+amber or just amber (when it turned from green). I think that the idea is that red+amber reminds that "it is not yet go time", while just amber is meant to imply "it is no longer 'go' signal" so that is why they ditched green+amber.
There was a stoplight in Atmore, Alabama (Church @ Pressley) that worked still this way into the 21st century for some bizarre reason. I'm not sure if it was leftover from the days before standardization or if it was malfunctioning somehow, but amber would always stay on for a bit with red or green. My grandmother got into an accident at this intersection, and when both drivers claimed they had the right of way, the town finally replaced it with a four-way stop. This was in the late 2000s.
In countries with a majority of vehicles being manual shift stick, the red + amber lights come on to ready the driver to allow him to change into 1st gear. This is the same reason in races why they use amber lights.
Most of Russia has a red+amber phase for 1 to 3 seconds before the light turns green. It's not required though, and there's plenty of junctions where the lights go red straight to green, in American style. Moscow is the most prominent example. Also, almost at every traffic light junction, the green light flashes for 3 seconds before it turns yellow.
Wait are your traffic lights not “smart”? In the UK, most of our traffic lights have induction loops which detect traffic build-up, making the light turn green when necessary.
Gregory May You still can - it's a matter of timing it just right. If you stay at exactly the speed limit, you'll usually catch every green as they change.
Some of each selected scenes are appeared in the episode of Spongebob Squarepants titled "Oral Report" when Spongebob says the complete essay about vehicle trafficking.
What a fun video! Never knew there were so many types of traffic signals. Stop on YELLOW? Ridiculous. Interesting seeing GREEN on top and RED on bottom. What were the FOUR COLORS, mentioned?? Myvife's hometown in China uses countdown numbers! RED: 49,48,47...3,2,1 GREEN: 59,58,57 You can start coasting when you realize the signal will be RED before you get it. (I use our countdown WALK signals the same way.)
Traffic lights have hardly changed in the past 60 years. I think one improvement long overdue is to make them larger to make them much more visible from greater distance. When they were first invented there was not as much competition from other lighting sources that would inhibit visibility. Now is a different story.
It's funny how they actually cared about keeping the flow of traffic moving. Today it's all about sitting at red light when there no opposit traffic or putting 10 lights in a 1000 feet stretch. Gotta love all the fuel wasted.
From what I see, it's a very complicated synchronization of traffic lights with a ton of variables to be taken into consideration. Traffic ingineers have a tough job to do.
Like with rail signals today, a Fourth aspect on a signal back then could have been various things, but usually Lunar or a straight up clear lens in front of an incandescent bulb.
These days a dual indication like y/g or r/y would create a fault in the monitor. I do wonder why the Federal Highway and Transportation Admin and did away with the the dual indicator system? Seems a logical safety feature. Id like to see that study if it prevented more accidents or caused more. There was also a time there was no all red clearance interval. It was instant change from red to green on opposing sides. As a traffic light collector and enthusiast, videos like this are amazing.
Here in Russia, we still have red+yellow before green. However red straight to green is permitted if the traffic light is not in a coordinated network. (I hate red straight to green personally) All-red intervals here are not required, my local intersection is pretty big and yet I've never seen a crash due to that. There's a nearby intersection with an all-red interval, however, probably because it's busier. More recently, since the early 2000s, flashing green for 3 seconds before yellow has been introduced.
Anyone else notice the transition of black and white to color I was going to make a joke on how we can’t see the red or green but no they added color somehow
The Clocksignal, maybe not but there are SOME semaphore signals in the hand of collectors today, the exact make of semaphore as seen in this video, an ACME currently owned by this gentlemen. : ua-cam.com/video/ooF9il6DZ-w/v-deo.htmlsi=_sFclWr99fPdUv3O Rare but could be found today in a few collections, crazy to think some even survived.
I'm surprised that the USA still doesn't require drivers to treat an amber light as 'must stop unless unsafe to do so', instead of 'go for it... you might beat the red'. 👻
It actually depends on the state. In some states like Oregon, you can get a ticket for "running a yellow light" if it was safe to stop but you chose to put your foot down.
I failed my first driving test for turning right on a yellow from a full stop. Even my driving instructor didn't even know this was illegal! From a full stop, you can turn right on a red or a green, but not a yellow. Go figure.
But I was already stopped. I had a green, and was going to turn right, but had to stop for a pedestrian. Once they cleared, I started moving and turned just after the light turned yellow. This is illegal.
@@PointyTailofSatan i know this is old but for other people reading, the reason it's illegal is because the yellow light means stop when it's safe to do so. Turning right on yellow is like being stoped a yellow and then darting thru the intersection when you should just wait out the red
im in the US and are traffic lights dont use the red and amber-green and amber tipes of signals. we use red-green-green-amber. im not talking about the green amber signal tipe.
How the fuck is someone supposed to know how long it will take for each light to change during a green wave? Granted, they should stomp on it when the light turns green when there's another red light right up ahead.
2019 and still some drivers overtake you in high speed just to be first for the next red light...
Let’s be honest. Timing of lights is absurd. You shouldn’t have to stop at every single intersection. Proper timing would allow and clean flow of cars from one light to another. Force everyone to stop every half a mile for no reason, and you’ll have drivers try to speed to the next one. Hell, even 90 years ago they were able to do it. Yet now they can’t? And everywhere you go, is slightly different , so you have no idea what will happen at the next intersection unless you constantly drive that road
Now the lights have weight sensors, so a light will never turn red unless it needs to. There are no timing schedules to adjust to, whoever gets there 1st will help trigger it faster.
On 2nd thought, if the intersection is busy enough where someone is always waiting and the lights are constantly being triggered, I guess it wouldn't be any different from the lights in this video. So yes it does help to find an even speed. Extend your brake life and get there just as fast.
Well sometimes when you speed up you pass before it turns red.
As a traffic engineer that times signals, this is so frustrating. If you're the lead car, the offset to the next signal is based on you going the speed limit. When you get passed, those drivers arrive too early and cause the platoon to experience small hiccups in flow.
Then everyone things the signals are timed bad...no, just go the speed limit!
I admire their ingenuity without a computer.
I thought it was interesting how it suddenly charged from black and white to color.
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Do they literally made a miniature traffic!!! A big salute to their effort for making people understand even after many years
I love the old-school rotation animation with just a spinning pole with a shifting background.. :) 5:52
So traffic light synchronization was developed in the '30s yet traffic engineers today can't figure out how to properly time lights to the speed limit?
It's all those side streets, and traffic in the opposing direction, that make it hard.
It's harder than you would think.
You can only have sensors in so many areas, someone drives in from a side street and sync is ruined, someone parks their car and the same happens.
It could work if every car was required to have a transponder or GPS tracking but that's too intrusive.
I love these old films. For better or worse, they serve as an amazing reminder of how different the world was not that many years ago. That said, it's kind of amazing that the traffic lights used 75 years ago look almost identical to today's. The drivers apparently weren't much different either....
The light at 2:53 is cool. The same type was used in a few "Bewitched" episodes.
No matter how much we convince ourselves, we haven't fundamentally changed much in a millennia.
@@marcuscook5145 Nope just the how
No, the drivers were much worse. Most of them grew up in the days of horse and carriages, so were much more likely to treat things like driving on the right side of the road as a suggestion.
Programming traffic light systems isn't much different to the cams and contact systems either, you can have cam timers displayed in software for the PLCs used for light control now.
Thank God the signal was nationalized! All those different one in different states would have been a pain.
One thing that's neat with these old lights, is the red+amber and the green+amber. I don't know when they stopped doing that, or if some places still do it.
They still do it in the UK.
In Poland we get red+amber or just amber (when it turned from green). I think that the idea is that red+amber reminds that "it is not yet go time", while just amber is meant to imply "it is no longer 'go' signal" so that is why they ditched green+amber.
There was a stoplight in Atmore, Alabama (Church @ Pressley) that worked still this way into the 21st century for some bizarre reason. I'm not sure if it was leftover from the days before standardization or if it was malfunctioning somehow, but amber would always stay on for a bit with red or green. My grandmother got into an accident at this intersection, and when both drivers claimed they had the right of way, the town finally replaced it with a four-way stop. This was in the late 2000s.
In countries with a majority of vehicles being manual shift stick, the red + amber lights come on to ready the driver to allow him to change into 1st gear. This is the same reason in races why they use amber lights.
Most of Russia has a red+amber phase for 1 to 3 seconds before the light turns green. It's not required though, and there's plenty of junctions where the lights go red straight to green, in American style. Moscow is the most prominent example.
Also, almost at every traffic light junction, the green light flashes for 3 seconds before it turns yellow.
Thanks to the makers of the video and to the publisher for sharing, its nice seeing how things were back in the day. Life was way simpler.
Traffic control is so much more complicated today, than back in 1937.. People today run all colors of the traffic signal...
Or they can time the lights like around the Chicago area to make you stop at every darn intersection to control speed. It's maddening.
Wait are your traffic lights not “smart”? In the UK, most of our traffic lights have induction loops which detect traffic build-up, making the light turn green when necessary.
@@YukiGersaniba almost all of them are smart but then they also time them to make life miserable
@@robertbell525 wat
That's nuts. Didn't figure they would have worked out synchronous lights before they even got a standard going for the country
These classic videos are great
I wish you could still travel from on end of town to the other with all green lights!
Gregory May You still can - it's a matter of timing it just right. If you stay at exactly the speed limit, you'll usually catch every green as they change.
Nope. Not in San Diego.
@@gregoryagogo Not in Tucson either. You can have light to moderate traffic, go the speed limit and catch most of the lights red.
What a clever and actually simple solution! 😍
Another masterpiece from the great auteur Jam Handy.
I love the narrator’s voice, I wish we could program a deepfake to duplicate it
Some of each selected scenes are appeared in the episode of Spongebob Squarepants titled "Oral Report" when Spongebob says the complete essay about vehicle trafficking.
We Had A Semaphore Traffic Light Here In Ho Ch Minh City In The Year 1937
What a fun video! Never knew there were so many types of traffic signals. Stop on YELLOW? Ridiculous. Interesting seeing GREEN on top and RED on bottom.
What were the FOUR COLORS, mentioned??
Myvife's hometown in China uses countdown numbers! RED: 49,48,47...3,2,1 GREEN: 59,58,57 You can start coasting when you realize the signal will be RED before you get it.
(I use our countdown WALK signals the same way.)
It's pretty much the same today...
Stop when the Light says STOP, and Goo when the Light says GOO!!
Speed up when it’s yellow
Traffic lights have hardly changed in the past 60 years. I think one improvement long overdue is to make them larger to make them much more visible from greater distance. When they were first invented there was not as much competition from other lighting sources that would inhibit visibility. Now is a different story.
The move to LEDs in the late '90s to early 2000s helped.
Huh?! Traffic signals haven't changed much in the last 60 years?! My God they've changed a ton what are you talking about?
Came here to see if those Cartoon signals really existed. Yes. 2:53. I just magined the loud "DING".
What a fantastic upload! Thank you!
I think they mean to imply that the lights will be timed for the speed limit of the road.
It's funny how they actually cared about keeping the flow of traffic moving. Today it's all about sitting at red light when there no opposit traffic or putting 10 lights in a 1000 feet stretch. Gotta love all the fuel wasted.
From what I see, it's a very complicated synchronization of traffic lights with a ton of variables to be taken into consideration. Traffic ingineers have a tough job to do.
id hate to be a traffic cop my hands would be tired lol
Traffic lights where I live: Nobody in the entire intersection moves for 10 seconds
Most of these clips was used in spongebobs oral report episode
If anybody knows what the forth color mentioned at 2:32 is please let me know.
I think it allows cornering...
Like with rail signals today, a Fourth aspect on a signal back then could have been various things, but usually Lunar or a straight up clear lens in front of an incandescent bulb.
Im a traffic engineer that times traffic signals, and reading these comments about how people think signals work is painful. Lol
These days a dual indication like y/g or r/y would create a fault in the monitor.
I do wonder why the Federal Highway and Transportation Admin and did away with the the dual indicator system? Seems a logical safety feature. Id like to see that study if it prevented more accidents or caused more.
There was also a time there was no all red clearance interval. It was instant change from red to green on opposing sides.
As a traffic light collector and enthusiast, videos like this are amazing.
Here in Russia, we still have red+yellow before green. However red straight to green is permitted if the traffic light is not in a coordinated network. (I hate red straight to green personally)
All-red intervals here are not required, my local intersection is pretty big and yet I've never seen a crash due to that. There's a nearby intersection with an all-red interval, however, probably because it's busier.
More recently, since the early 2000s, flashing green for 3 seconds before yellow has been introduced.
"The lights look like little houses"
*Shows a clock*
Also I want to know what this mysterious fourth color is.
Now in California they must have installed 1960 and replace any older signals with newer ones.
@HarborGuy Yes, and unlike today the drivers of the cars were actually DRIVING and PAYING ATTENTION.....
Some of the signals that are present in this film probably don't exist anymore.
The Great Grandmother Of My Friend AJ Siu Was Born In 1937
Now in the past it have a cams but today we use traffic signal controllers/computer
Anyone else notice the transition of black and white to color I was going to make a joke on how we can’t see the red or green but no they added color somehow
We must follow the colors of the traffic light's brain 👌☺
There were no pedestrian lanes, street lane linings, intersection lanes...
fantasitc video
Once thing I noticed in the traffic, is that all the cars didn't look the same., unlike today...........
they still used the synced lights it sucks when you get stuck in a red light loop
2:57 3:03 I'm pretty sure somehow there are no existing copies of those traffic signals.
The Clocksignal, maybe not but there are SOME semaphore signals in the hand of collectors today, the exact make of semaphore as seen in this video, an ACME currently owned by this gentlemen. : ua-cam.com/video/ooF9il6DZ-w/v-deo.htmlsi=_sFclWr99fPdUv3O
Rare but could be found today in a few collections, crazy to think some even survived.
Well yea, those are the most common compared to everything else…I wish that spinning disk one was salvaged. Would be awesome to see
Who remember when SpongeBob had a homework about this? 😊
0:50 "In Asia, Europe, Africa,
(Toto's Africa slowly fades in)
hahaha
This reminds me of spongebob
🚦🚦🚦
No stripes on the road?
Zebra crosswalks became a thing in the 1950s
I only see black n white
I'm surprised that the USA still doesn't require drivers to treat an amber light as 'must stop unless unsafe to do so', instead of 'go for it... you might beat the red'. 👻
It actually depends on the state. In some states like Oregon, you can get a ticket for "running a yellow light" if it was safe to stop but you chose to put your foot down.
hands up everyone who failed their driving license test due to color blindness
ไงปังคุง
Spongebob anyone?
He has an oral report about this topic.
I failed my first driving test for turning right on a yellow from a full stop. Even my driving instructor didn't even know this was illegal! From a full stop, you can turn right on a red or a green, but not a yellow. Go figure.
the cars behind you are not expecting a car to stop
But I was already stopped. I had a green, and was going to turn right, but had to stop for a pedestrian. Once they cleared, I started moving and turned just after the light turned yellow. This is illegal.
@@PointyTailofSatan i know this is old but for other people reading, the reason it's illegal is because the yellow light means stop when it's safe to do so. Turning right on yellow is like being stoped a yellow and then darting thru the intersection when you should just wait out the red
im in the US and are traffic lights dont use the red and amber-green and amber tipes of signals. we use red-green-green-amber. im not talking about the green amber signal tipe.
Then came road-rage and car to car shootings.
How the fuck is someone supposed to know how long it will take for each light to change during a green wave? Granted, they should stomp on it when the light turns green when there's another red light right up ahead.
Announcer has a uniquely irritating style!
nope