Funfact, in Estonia during the night most lights blink yellow and its up to driver to check if the intersection is free to go. Keep in mind that Estonia is a tiny country with rather small population, so something like that would not be possible in most of the big cities.
In the US in a small farmtown in New York all of our lights change to blinking yellow at 10pm or so we do still have sensors at our main street intersection.
Dutch traffic lights, and im sure other countries do this as well, have multiple loops. One multiple meters before the traffic light, one at the stop line, one after the stop line and one in the intersection. All to detect stuck cars, incoming cars or standing cars. They also use the loops after the stopline to detect cars crossing a red light to delay a green if necessary
There's most of the time 3 in front of the stop sign some even more, and these allow a few things - have lights be red by default at night and turn green just in time (done to make the green useful so people don't ignore red lights at night) - allows that one speedy car in the closing time to regain a green light just a second after it gone red (used that trick daily 😁) - detect if a car is not stopping, and turn the other lights to red for safety - detect an approximation of the amount of cars waiting and assign priority to give green and the time it's green (but this also means the system can be tricked) - detect the current traffic flow and there's probably even more things that can be detected with just using multiple induction loops
Where I live, they use cameras rather than loops. It will see people approaching ahead of time, and it also works with motorcycles! The only problems come if you are on an asphalt-colored motorcycle wearing asphalt-colored gear, or when it's snowing, but they detect the snow problem and turn into normally timed lights
They have two of them sometimes in urban settings like Hamilton and Toronto. You can still trip them by strategically stopping on two at once. It helps if you have a bigger car, but I've been able to trip them in a Matiz (something about as long as two bicycles).
I am the CAD operator for a US state DOT that makes the drawings/tables/what ever else for a road when it comes to traffic, and when I saw this vid I had to watch. This is a very very good broad understanding of the tech involved and the graphics with the detection loops were a good opening. Generally the detection loops on my area, a state, are more than one deep; also video detection has become very much more preferred but works very much in the same space, but not induction based, image based. Another thing is the mention of smart cars, now where I live and work is.... well not a metropolitan area, lets call it spars, think central US. To my knowledge there were ZERO inaccuracy's within this video, I am not a traffic engineer just the guy that makes the drawings, but to my knowledge this is a pretty good general assessment of how things are done and what is to come. In the coming years, your car will cellularly report its GPS location and receive information for said location based on what is happening. There are companies out there already doing it and its really cool for traffic flow. It will be dynamic timing of lights/phases of signals based on needs, rather than best educated guesses. Autonomous travel, when fully adopted will take a lot of time out of travel because, they need to know where your car is to help.
Once every single vehicle is autonomous on the road, there won’t be a need for red lights or stop signs anymore. Once they all can communicate with each other and know where and how fast they’re going, they will just zip along and basically never stop moving, unless there’s an incident.
We were sitting a red light in traffic a few days after watching this video. My 5-year-old son, who I didn't think was paying much attention, starts spouting off about the box at the intersection and its programming. Kudos for explaining red lights in a way that a kid can not only understand, but regurgitate.
Here in my (rural) city in Germany it's actually the other way around for many traffic lights funnily enough: During times of high traffic they are on a time while during the night they are just all red until someone approaches the traffic light. Probably that's because you don't want people to speed during the night or so and during high traffic there's someone waiting at each end anyways, so the induction coils (and cameras) don't get you much as they are just triggered all the time.
> Probably that's because you don't want people to speed during the night or so Or maybe it’s so that they can quickly turn green when they detect an approaching car.
@@ThePC007 Yeah but there's clearly a main street that 90% of the cars come from in the night and it seems to be clearly timed to turn green, if you slow down to like 30 km/h instead of the allowed 50 km/h
Most places I've seen at night will go into a demand mode where the primary traffic direction is green with the others being activated on demand as someone hits the sensors. They will also generally still be on a timer and run through a short cycle for the secondary directions every few minutes even without the sensor. Just in case either the sensor has failed or there's a Linus on a motorbike stuck there waiting.
Here in Estonia, most of the lights will start blinking yellow meaning slow down and check if you can go. Works pretty well as there aren't many people driving during the night. No need to run all the AI crap and whatever for just 3 people
@@offsetmonkey538 We have the same thing on some traffic light but here they just straight up turn it off, which means: treat it as if there was no traffic light at all.
NotJustBikes did an interesting video on Dutch intersections, and how they have shorter delays between the red light in one direction and the green light in the other direction. It’s really worth a watch if you want to see other approaches to traffic management
yea.. we here have pretty decent traffic flow management (so called green zones make sure that for straightforward going traffic each follow up traffic light will turn or is green when you approach it during busy traffic hours and stays on orange about 20 seconds longer than normally), not on turn traffic lights though… good tip is to also try to follow the public transport busses as these can request green lights to be on time at each stop)
Definitely worth a watch. Dutch traffic control is far more advanced than north america or Australia's. I guess part of it is their comprehensive attempts at traffic management which includes prioritizing non-car-based modes of transport.
Exactly, when a city prioritize bikes, pedestrians and public transportation, even Car traffic gets better. Less cars, less jams. Linus could be a support in this cause!
@@goozbaghali Indeed, we have lights (and infrastructure overall) to prioritize on transporting people instead of transporting cars. Which, for example, gives way to many more cyclists and public transport on their routes. Also we have different routes for different modes of transportation. And also optimized for distance and average speed. For example a longer but faster route for motor traffic and a shorter but slower route for cyclists. Which means they both arrive at the same destination around the same time. (still depends on distance though). Also our traffic lights are smarter and will give green when no other traffic is detected, has detection loops in cycle paths and even on some walkways. Takes also the speed of each mode of transport in consideration. Has early detection (100-300 m before the lights). And a shorter wait time overall.
Living in Sydney, I can say "That's cool, but it still doesn't stop the traffic jams!" We still need to keep growing public transport. And the bike lanes are in terrible need of more love.
bike lanes are in terrible need of being ripped out. cyclists are see you next tuesdays. as a pedestrian i despise lycra wearing homosexuals. they either ride at 50km/h on pedestrian paths or at 15km/h on roads. they never use the bike lanes and they ignore all road rules. they are a danger to everyone including themselves.
Yeah not wrong, try sitting on the Great Western highway at around 4:30pm any weekday, the traffic lights let's 4-5 cars through at a time and the traffic is banked up for kilometres.
This is the comment I was looking for. I’m sceptical that computers and AI can solve the physical problem that is the immense amount of space (for driving and parking) that personal vehicles require
Fun fact: some states have exception laws that allow you to go thru a red light if you’re stuck, especially for motorcyclists [I presume so you don’t, say, have someone on a bike stuck in a torrential downpour for 10 extra minutes because the light doesn’t want to change]. CHECK YOUR LOCAL TRAFFIC LAWS AND ASSUME THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS UNTIL YOU KNOW OTHERWISE.
@@DoctorX17 Here it's just if you know the light is malfunctioning which can be kinda tricky to discern and with sensor lights, safe breaks in traffic can be rare.
It's so cool to see advanced traffic lights technology like this. While in Indonesia, almost all traffic lights still use traditional timer. In my area, you get 60s red and 20s green, and may vary in another area (there are particular place here that has 300s red light lol). One interesting finding, some traffic lights timer depends on where you're going, i.e. it give you 60s if you go straight, but only 15s if you turn right.
wire inductor is also used in older traffic lights. New ones use a combination of camera, IR, radar, etc... and they connect with each other to synchronize traffic flows. Where I live (far north Peoria, AZ), they have put in smart lights in all intersections and the lights change for you as you drive up to the intersection... its so freaking awesome... The entire north end of the city has blown up over the last 15-20 years and this area they put in all new smart systems from new... and the main road from the freeway up the center of the section where hundreds of thousands of homes and business are, they are using machine learning to synchronize the entire 10 miles and all side roads... so if your in a group of cars coming off the freeway, you will be getting green the entire way through, and all side lights are timed in their rows and the model adjusts to the second so its always building and learning.
Fun fact, either SCATS or Surtrac or SCOOT or whatever adaptive or AI signal system requires so many new installations of detectors that cities can rarely find the money to fund such upgrades. The travel time saving from Surtrac and alike are suspicious because the intersections are often so carefully chosen from places that were somewhat congested but not hosed by freeways or other roadway constraints so that in fact any signal timing technique that uses some kind of coordination and dynamic real-time retiming technique will show a good improvement. There’s no need to hype up the future of AI in improving traffic, because it really can’t do that much.
@@acters124 detectors don’t track people. Not every word related to “detect” is evading your privacy. Detectors merely sense whether a vehicle is present before the stop bar, so the output is 0 or 1, that’s it. Even camera detectors do the same thing, they see a vehicle show up in the frame, and send an input to the signal controller. For cameras to track people, it has to have a license plate reader (or worse, facial recognition algorithm), which will require the passing of local legislation to be used such as red light enforcement or bus lane enforcement cameras.
We're actually using camera-based detection with machine vision at some sites down here in Minnesota. Come take a look! (edit: they can also measures speeds and count and classify the cars, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, and cyclists...)
@Coolesding The traffic lights in my German city is seemingly designed to turn red just as you arrive from the previous traffic light. They are very efficient at making you burn as much fuel as possible, lol.
Hi from the Netherlands! Why induction only at the stop light, if you can also detect it upon approach? Most busy intersections can detect up to 3 car lengths here, and will quickly switch to green if you are on the slow approach. Also, what we really want is you take the bike if possible, so within cities, cyclist get green quicker than car traffic. We even have infrared camera's for cyclist detection in some cities. You can do this for pedestrians too, on top of the waiting button for pedestrians. So if you really want better traffic, making cycling paths for those on the short commute is good option. And for anything longer: good and frequent public transport, combined with affordability measures, make for good ways of shifting commuters from the car to bus, metro, tram or train. Really the worst you can do is build your road system in such a way, that you need a car for everything, which results in people on the road who are forced to, not because they can or want to. Grocery stores in your neighborhood that are reachable by foot are vital infrastructure. #NotJustBikes
This is north America, we get stuff here 20 years later. People are wowed by parking lot stall availability 7 segment displays and overhead LED (Red = taken, Green = free) - This was in use in Korea since the early 2000s. Everyone here is like "wow how high tech" - dude, a 286 computer runs Canadian Tire's automated search and retrieval system, which has roots in the 80s - this is not ground breaking stuff.
Where I live they have moved away from using induction loops and now use phased array antennas (the white squares you see mounted on the poles angled towards each direction). I saw a demonstration while in school showing how they could discern each of the individual cars (as well as motorcycles) including which lanes they were in and how fast they were traveling. Much more effective than the induction sensors
I work for the company that likely makes the ones you are talking about (based on descriptions and us being the market leaders). Not only do our sensors look at the stopbar to know when cars arrive, but we can look several hundred feet up the approaching lane to see oncoming traffic. One benefit of this is that it can hold a yellow light if it detects you going a certain speed and it thinks you are not going to stop (that's the simple version at least). This results in a proven decrease in mid-intersection accidents!
@@dylbarton We've had these in the UK for ages. Late at night it's possible to see the controller skip parts of the sequence so that you get a green light faster.
In the UK most of our lights are either induction like you mention or have MVD’s installed (microwave vehicle detectors) installed that can see a car approaching the light at a greater distance then induction so that the car doesn’t have to stop when approaching if the junction is clear from other directions
The sensors are not pre-emptive by themselves, they can't see traffic approaching or the number. They are now adding systems & integration as you said. But it's not perfect because they can wire them wrong. Huge queue of traffic down the mountain, the more they try to extend the green light, the more it's red because they wired/labelled/programed it wrongly. They should have video cameras watching traffic, identifying types of vehicles, number plates & speed. It sees you coming & can change lights before you get to the usual sensor. It could keep track of your usual trips, predict where vehicles are going & model multiple possible timings to optimise flow, reduce trucks having to stop. Smart grid. Lots of value judgements, someone else will usually loose for you to gain.
When I was a kid, the stop lights in my town all used to turn into flashing lights after a certain hour at night. Flashing yellow for the busier road, and flashing red to act as a stop sign for the less busy crossroad. At some point this changed, and now we all get to sit around at red lights at 2am when there's not another soul in sight. What an improvement... Worst light I've ever come across was one miles out in the middle of nowhere on the way to my mom's house. There is _never_ traffic at that intersection, and the light is timed with some _insanely_ long cycle. No idea why the light is even there; a stop sign would be far cheaper and far more effective.
In Vancouver, left turns at intersections are designed for 3 vehicles to activate the left turn advance. If two vehicles are lined up, most likely the left advance won’t trigger because of where the pads are placed, the second car won’t be on those, you can by pass this by stopping a little farther from the car in front of you.
I got stuck in a turning lane once in an older section of a busy road, but the traffic lights were using the pressure wires. We were the only ones in that turn lane for over 30 minutes with breakfast in the car, just watching traffic switching N+S, E+W, and even the turn lane in front of us. We drove back and forth in hopes to trigger the wires, but it didn't work. We started to started to consider other options, because it really seemed like we would never be let out of that lane, but then a vehicle entered the lane behind us and it finally let us go. Later on those lights where changed during road re-construction.
There's lots like that in my area too. If you follow those induction loop wires, it'll lead to a cover on the side of the road. In the UK where I am, we can contact the local council and they'll send out an engineer to adjust the sensitivity so it'll detect motorbikes again (The sensitivity drifts with age apparently)
@@th3d3wd3r I'm in the UK too... and I think you'll find that depends a lot on the council... I know I have been on to mine a number of times about the issues, and so did a colleague of mine who was a local politician, with no success.
A lot of motorcycles use fibreglass etc so there isn't enough metal to trigger the signal, same with bicycles. They need a pretty big chunk o' metal to trigger reliably.
I used to work for my state's Department of Transportation. Even in my rural US area induction loops are nearly all phased out. Now we use video cameras with user specified detection zones, and they're actually pretty simple to understand the concept. You just box out where you want it to consider as the waiting area for cars, and you can specifically X out areas that shouldn't be looked at too. The signals run at a set interval, but detections can allow for extra time, like to give a green left arrow only when the left turning lane has someone. Sometimes they link them so you "ride the green wave", but most aren't that busy (rural) so they just let them operate independently. Also after the DOT installs them it's up to the townships to maintain them, and sometimes they poke with the timings and screw it all up lol. They can have multiple schedules too. Really late at night we typically put them on blink, blinking red means treat it like a stop sign and blinking yellow means roll on through cautiously. When a train comes through they can handle that. During set peak times, like a light next to a school or large business, a light can have a different schedule to handle the brief traffic peak too
When you are in a bike/scooter/motorcycle you can still trigger the induction detector at a light. You need to ride on either side of the circle instead of in the middle (of the lane). When you cross the detector in the middle, these small devices only cross ~10% of the detector. If you go on either side, you get closer to 50%. You can also move back and forth over the detector to make sure it senses you. Works every time for me.
In the netherlands those loops arent circles, but rectangles. An advantage from this is that you can have them wider, or longer depending on its use. The one at the stop line is usually set more sensitive aswell to make sure bikes and such are always detected.
In Brazil lights will change to flashing mode during the night and in most large cities with high crime rates you're usually allowed to drive through red if you don't hit your car, at your own risk, so you're not robbed/mugged (some cities allow for you to do that as early as 7 pm). It's not unusual to see signs stating the time it's allowed to do that. Plus you can do it anytime of the day if your life is in danger by a criminal with a gun etc.
@@gorkskoal9315 You have to live there to understand what I mean. My last 2 cars there were bulletproof, so I could stop at red lights at ease. Traffic congestion and entering my garage too.
Working 2nd shift, there's one thing I notice that can happen at a certain intersection: One of the induction wires gets damaged, always thinking cars are waiting there. This is especially annoying when it happens on a less traveled side street. It will always change to a hefty-length green, even when no cars are waiting for the light, giving the main road a long red (and yes, it is a car-detecting light, not a simple timer one).
Sadly, those lights often do not consider cyclists and pedestrians. The Netherlands (as mentioned in some other comments already) tries to detect them as well. And I sure hope those fancy schmancy new technologies and neural networks are not too car-centric.
@@tonnentonie2767 I'm living proof you are wrong good person lol... Though based on the half assed decisions our loving regional transit systems (and in turn the Gov refusing to fund them to entice riders to return) have decided to put into play, while more expensive, driving does look mighty tempting, just so I don't get stranded...
Where I live in the UK, at some pedestrian crossings there are cameras that seem to detect pedestrians and adjust the amount of time before the lights go red for the cars and the length of time the lights stay red for the cars depending on the presence of pedestrians
those lights that "discourage" speeding actually encourage it. If you speed fast enough, you can miss the red light if you know the street well enough! I dont wanna live on this planet anymore
Great explanation, surprised you didn't mention the growingly popular detection method of optical detection, using the cameras you see at the top of streetlights. This takes in image data from the street and detects a difference in luminance (sometimes color) to see if a car or other vehicle is present. Lasts way longer than the loops in the ground and is more effective in detecting things like bikes+motorcycles. Plus, in advanced configurations, can up the priority of a signal change if there is traffic backed up. (this is also sometimes done with loop detection)
I can't believe you didn't mention having multiple induction loops after one another. This is a system in the Netherlands, and it allows the traffic lights to turn orange (yellow in some countries) before the last car even drives over the last induction loop. This improves the traffic flow even futher.
One thing that few understand is DURING SATURATED periods (where the "line" or queue to a light never exhausts - that is, when there is "more than one cycle worth of cars waiting. In this situation, THE LONGER THE CYCLE, THE BETTER. It's basic throughput. There is a loss of efficiency every time a light changes, from built in safety timing buffers, and from simple time to accelerate after turning green. Thus if there's a CONSTANT steady flow, the longer the better, as less loss during the changes - ergo reducing total wait time.
Pretty neat to see Carnegie Mellon's system here in Pittsburgh mentioned! Here in Pennsylvania we have the "Ride on Red" law. It allows you treat a red light like a stop sign within reason if you feel the stoplight has failed to detect you. The law was originally put into place for Amish buggies (PA problems... lol) and motorcycles but luckily they decided it should apply to everyone on the road.
As a fellow Pittsburgher some people use that to just go whenever they feel it like especially where I live which is sad and Oakland is a mess because they have so many hospitals near there so there is a million pedestrians and the pedestrians have the right of way always because of pa law but near me they just floor it near a pedestrian and don’t stop either
That's really interesting to know. Many states let you turn right on red unless otherwise posted, but I've never heard of that. PA's roads suck, but at least their laws (and drivers) aren't as bad...
2:50 I remember going into the master control building in the late 80s/90s as a school excursion in Australia to see how it all worked as my school happened to be near the building. It was amazing to see "VGA" monitors showing signal status of any intrestion, and our guide showing how he could even bring up status to see if pedestrian had hit the walk button at a particular interesction.🚦
the simplified way it works: the loop creates an induction field around where it is, this field can reach up to 50cm depending on how strong or sensitive it needs to be. The way a car or bicycle is detected is because the field is constantly measured and when the metal goes through it, it will disturb its values somwhat.
What I think would be cool with this is an interconnected traffic network that works with not only traffic lights but cars as well. So if you put in your destination in, every traffic light and car along that route knows where you’re going (just not who you are or why you’re going there, just this car is going from A to B). If anything unexpected happens on your route, it’s communicated back to your car, which updates the route, and passes those changes along. Then imagine something like that with more cars, and (when they’re good enough) self driving cars. With the self driving cars, not only could it know the route to take, but the speed as well and adjust to make the trip more seamless.
There was a stretch of road in Detroit, Michigan where if you were traveling the speed limit you could go for about 10 miles and have green lights all the way.
i do love the smart lights system, a simple detection ( camera or loop ) that turns the light on green when there is no traffic so at the rush hour it use a timed system ( min - max ) , and after that it just counts the cars and make it green for the X amount of cars or swap when there are XX cars waiting on the other side This makes driving at the less buzzy hours just so much more better then waiting all the time for a "useless" red light, longest time you need to wait at a red light is 30 seconds and mostly the light jumps to green when you are approaching it
The group of cabinets you see on the side of a traffic signal contains all the automation to manage it. It's done by a programmable logic controller tied into some regional network. A lot of times when the traffic signal is new it usually works properly. But, power outages will be a problem and may cause the PLC to run on 1 default schedule no matter what. Now days UPS's are installed at the signals because shutting power off to a plc creates issues like sitting at a red light with no cross traffic. Unless the DOT setup the schedule that way.
A place I uses to live had a three way intersection on a timer. This place got super busy during rush hour and the council did nothing to improve the system. There where 3 crossings that had buttons to let the system know you wanted to cross, but it didn't change how the lights worked. It just turned on the walking green light and sounded the crossing sound when the one you where waiting at went red.
some cities in the UK also change depending on speed of traffic, if you drive like you are driving an 18 wheeler, so slow acceleration from stationary, then all the lights ahead will be green as long as you don't break the speed limit. whereas if you stop at a traffic light that is red, and accelerate like the bat out of hell, you will be stationary at every single traffic light while the person who didn't accelerate like the bat out of hell maintains speed all the time without having to majorly slow down, more common for late at night though, as too much traffic during the day.
The traffic lights in my German city seem to be designed to turn red just as you arrive from the previous traffic light, thus ensuring that you burn as much fuel as possible. It’s honestly infuriating, especially when much poorer countries, such as Belarus or Rwanda have those awesome traffic lights with LED timers on them to let you know when you can take your foot off the gas and downshift because the light is about to turn red.
Look at it from a different perspective, maybe the lights are designed that way to discourage drivers to speed through a place where people live. By making car travel slow, public transport gets more appealing (and cheaper), it will make walking and cycling more appealing. All result in less pollution, less noise pollution, fewer traffic accidents, and a better walkable place.
@@michielvoetberg4634 A row of traffic lights near where I live does this and you need to speed to catch the next green. Going the speed limit will result in lights turning red just as you get to them. If anything, it heavily incentivizes speeding
@@michielvoetberg4634 Ironically, speeding would allow you pass the red light, since it’s synced in such a way that it turns red just as you arrive from the previous light, assuming you’re driving the speed limit. Plus, if they made the lights turn red sooner, people would let go of their gas pedals to save gas and therefore drive slower.
The lights in my town, absent traffic pattern changing, will default to if you're cruising down the street at right around the speed limit, the lights will stay green for you. Many is the time late night where I will be doing the speed limit, someone comes rushing around me, and then they're stopped at the red light that turns green just before I would need to brake for the red. I slide right past them in the next lane, move over to the right, and then we do the same sad thing all over again.
I live in Perth Australia. we have pretty bad traffic issues here, but when it comes down to it, it's how people react to traffic and use the roads properly and road rules etc etc
Start using more roundabouts (traffic circles) and you don't have to wait as much and it'll reduce accidents. It's tested and proven in many places. When I lived in the US (I'm from Sweden) I hated that you almost always had red lights or stop signs as it takes more time and increases risk for accident since you get irritated 😊
I live in the northwest US, and around here I feel like everyone I have talked to about roundabouts despises them. I think they're a great idea, but I guess because they are a pretty new and fairly uncommon thing here, people don't like the change.
Traffic lights in England are programmed in many ways mentioned here, like timers and induction loop sensors. Most traffic light based systems actually use a process called VA or "Vehicle Actuation" where a small black box (normally attached to the traffic light head) sends out a low level radar ping over a certain distance. If this ping hits anything traveling over 2.5mph, the radar ping will reflect back into the VA sensor registering "Demand" for that light to change. Sometimes the lights change automatically if there is no "Registered Demand" on the other phase (side of the lights), and sometimes where there is demand, a "Maximum Green" timer is enforced, to which the traffic light can only remain green for a certain time before having to give way to the other phase's demand.
FACT: here in district 16, in Sacramento, California, we only have timers on the lights. We have sensors set up all throughout the city, you see them on every single traffic light. None of them are operational. We found that a few years ago if you time the lights to turn green if you are going exactly the speed limit on that street, people feel confident about continuing to speed. But at the traffic lights that we have cameras to set up for… We time those for 5 miles an hour under the speed limit. This incentivizes last minute bird house through a red light bringing us $500 every time somebody does it. Shut only that, but we also get increased budgets for our court houses and administrators, who are all on unions, and have huge amounts of voting power The reason why we don’t take peoples license away when they are repeat, DUI offenders… Is because more than 40% of our cities revenue comes from DUI arrests. If we took their ability to drive away, we wouldn’t have as big of a union, and our voting power wouldn’t matter as much meaning, less raises and less incentives
Where I drive many of the cities use camera's as sensors. During high traffic times the lights coordinate with others along the route and during low traffic times, like middle of the night, they detect the vehicle approaching and if there is no cross traffic on the major road it will turn the light green before you get to the light if you are doing the speed limit. If you are driving on the higher traffic road at night all you see are green lights but if you are travelling too fast the light will turn red before you arrive then back green when you slow down.
Ok, now check out dutch trafic lights because those are about 20x more advanced than anything in north America. Pretty much all traffic lights have these loops, but not only at the stopping line, but also way before the light to measure traffic density, have lights turn green before you come to a stop on empty street crossings and in addition all this stuff for bikes and pedestrians separately. Most traffic lights are interconnected and they even take weather conditions into account. Like mentioned in other comments, not just bikes on youtube has some amazing videos explaining how it works.
@@Klub4143 unlike shown in the video we dont just use 1 or 2 loops. we always have several, ive seen a single lane have 8 of them, and they can be far away so you can be detected from 2-300m away. Besides that the systems have already been communicating with eachother for over a decade.
Fun fact: For law enforcement concerns, some traffic lights in Brazil get radars to get people who are advancing on a red light. But for security concerns, some of them are turned off from the late night till early Morning
If you have a motorcycle, a neodymium magnet (or a few) stuck to the bottom can sometimes help you get picked up by the detector when you otherwise wouldn't.
I have my doubts on how affective that would be. I've got a shit load of N55 magnets in my motor and that doesn't help at all. Not to mention phase coils carrying hundreds of amps
Where I live, almost all are inductors. Those have a tendency to fail, especially in rain. I remember one night after a night shift at work, I was stuck at a red with a line of cars behind me. After a few phases, I ended up running it (and reporting the malfunctioning light). With as much power that these controllers have, they should at least be able to have resilience against failing sensors.
I build intersections for a living. Another key aspect in major cities for vehicle detection is in the use of cameras. These cameras do away with the detection loops in the ground. The video detection cameras see a change in light, from the color of your car entering over asphalt, for a vehicle entering the intersection. There are other systems in the control cabinet that could also connect to the city's public transport that allows for buses to have faster travel routes. We have an optic fiber cables connecting every cabinet for fault detection and homogeneous timing.
Tips for changing the light. Don't pull too far over the white stop bar as it can sometimes put you outside of the vehicle detection. Vehicle detection is anywhere from 30-40 feet before the stop bar, so inching forward over the line isn't going to help you any.
Just north of Pittsburgh, we’ve been an early user/tester of CMU systems for years. Our area had grown very quickly that it was in need of help. We’ve continued to grow and it’s still a challenge at times, but not really worse than a decade ago. So I suppose it must be helping.
I take it it's Crannberry? I worked there and those lights crossing over 19 SUCK. It would take 15 min or sometimes longer to go from around the Goodwill store (west side of 19 on Freedom Rd) to Crann woods. Ironically I never even heard of Surtrac and I've lived here all my life
The interesting thing about the succession lighting is at least where I work, it's on a consistent loop. This means I can always catch the light leaving work if I leave at the right time without stopping (I walk) all the way to the transit hub nearby. When a pedestrian hits the button on the lessor used road to cross for said light the signals retime themselves to go back into sync meaning the lights will forever stay locked, this usually means the light will be either shorter or longer, usually shorter. Also the signals displayed at 1:30 are a bad example, but due to location it might for safety reasons, as best to have staggered lighting vs synced as shown if you care about distance lower fuel use etc, also staggering lights based on speed would effectively kill long distance speeding as they'd eventually run into a red light that they would need to stop at instead of cruising threw all greens at the speed limit.
Im reminded of a single stoplight on a super long stretch of road near me. It has a sensor above it that looks like a camera and in the early mornings and later afternoons when it doesnt have to address traffic then its green all the time... until a car is coming, then within breaking distance it will turn yellow to get them to stop. Im assuming its to demotivate speeding since its a REALLY long stretch of road, but i like to think that there is someone controlling it and chooses to fk with people who are just trying to get to work in the mornings.
@@Crosbie85 He lives in the standard American-Type city. I'd be surprised if he gave a shit about public transport for that alone, but also because he could more or less continue buying a new car each month to commute to and from work if he chose to. Not ragging on the guy for being rich, but he has no reason to think of a solution to a problem he doesn't suffer from.
I learned about and how to program the devices that control stop lights, Programable Logic Controllers, PCLs back in college. I'm glad that you guys covered where the triggering areas are for these as people that stop past the point are safety concerns.
People use our streets outside of motor vehicles too, a fact that channels like yours and CGP Grey all too conveniently ignore when they don't want to address the messy complications of optimizing traffic flow for cars at the expense of everyone else. Carbrain is a heck of a drug.
i wrote a screenplay where various AI models use the traffic AI to reduce the human population so they all can reach their goals. So a traffic AI would reduce congestion by having vehicles collide, thus removing them from circulation and improving efficiencies. For this to work, you need reliance and trust be established first.
Y'all remember that dude that discovered his city messed with the light timings in the more ghetto part of town so the cops could just constantly harass the residents for reasons you could guess? Stuffs crazy. Also hearing Linus talk about scat(s) isn't how I expected my day to come to an end
I'm a traffic technician and they are right. The county I manage uses road loops (lines in the roads), infrared, cameras and radar. Almost every intersection is connected to a fiber network that can alert us when something is wrong.
Fun Fact: If you’re stuck at a light with a motorcycle, just turn it off and on again (not a joke) and it’ll trigger the light. The starters electromagnetic field will produce a large enough current to trigger the light.
The Netherlands has a system called iTLIs. It is also a smart traffic management system. The huge difference however is that it not only uses ground loops, cameras, buttons for pedestrians. But also navigation apps used in the Netherlands. It then uses all of this information to manage: cars, transit, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and other heavy vehicles and of course emergency services. I would say this makes all the systems mentioned in the video look basic.
Here's my $100,000,000 idea to replace the traffic light induction loops. Make them NFC billing points instead. All lights stay red, and whoever pays more gets to have the green light first.
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In Southern IN and Northern KY, the further away from downtown you go, the more the lights simply shift to blinking yellow/red rather than normal cycling late at night. It works for us near a large city.
In Poland (thanks for showing Warsaw in the video, btw) on less attended intersections the lights go blinking yellow at night. Only the most frequented roads are kept on 'active duty'. Then it's all down to the traffic management systems which here combine traffic cameras and induction loops. In many cities they give priority to public transport, so if you see a tram, just like in the video from one of the roundabouts in Warsaw, then be prepared to wait. A long, long time.
I saw this a while back when I visited (maybe 5 years ago?) and was walking around at night. It will be decades before we get that kind of solution here in North America, if at all.
I know an intersection where the main road has green light at all times and the crossing road only get green light when the induction loops senses that a car has approached the stoplight. This can have pretty funny results. For one thing it seems to have a problem detecting bikes, so those used to it will roll up and use the button for pedestrians. But once I saw a driver who stopped about a two car lengths from the light and waited for green light. That was far enough that the car didn't register and so they were left waiting for close to ten minutes before someone passing by pressed the button used by pedestrians.
In my local area in the UK I'm pretty sure some sets of lights work on backwards logic - i.e, they go red as soon as a car approaches, green for the direction where there are no cars, then as soon as a car approaches from the clear direction those lights go red and the ones you've been waiting at then go green!
Pennsylvania passed a law years ago that, if the light is red and stays on red for longer than normal, you can treat it like a stop sign as long as there are no cars coming towards the intersection and it's safe to do so.
Where i live, there's a 4 way intersection where the inductors have only been laid on the straight lanes and the left turning lanes, because if there's no traffic, we're allowed to turn right on a red light unless a sign says the opposite. During the pandemic, they decided to add those signs. Now the problem is, on the main road the light is set to stay green at all times unless cross traffic is waiting. Not a bad solution, until you're in the rightmost lanes of said cross road and want to turn right. it will literally not turn green unless someone drives up on the center lane. I've timed it for fun one night because i had nothing to do. I stayed there for 12 minutes, and it never turned green for me. Now cops have had the genius idea to use it as a ticket trap. Lose patience and turn illegally, earn a ticket. you can contest of course, and you'll likely win too! but most people can't be bothered to try and end up paying.
The only time I ever had an issue was when I was at an 4 way and there was no traffic light, visibility was poor, and I got T boned in the front. I had to go to The courthouse to deal with it. The judge dealt with and dismissed everything (It was a backroads and I had no other citations) and that was it. Outside of that, I’ve never had an issue in court. My friend Daniel Sanders was literally reminding me daily for six months
If you drive a motorcycle and there are lights at night that won't change, one trick is to pop it in neutral and put your kickstand down on the loop. It's not 100% if the loop's sensitivity is just simply WAY too low, but on ones that miss your bike (especially happens to touring bikes that ride higher) the kickstand trick will make it register. Luckily for me as someone in an area with a few that fall into the way too low category, they made it legal to go through a red on a clear road after waiting for a certain amount of time, or a rotation of the opposite going red then back to green. Our lights are dumb... many people consider a yellow a sign to speed up around here because of it...
So... In Port Coquitlam, if you're heading east on Coquitlam Ave about to cross Oxford, the light will turn green for even a longboard. I do it all the time on my board late at night. I want to say it's an oversensitive induction loop, but it is also just two straight strips.
Pretty sure my town is timer based, with the timer changing at night to be ridiculously fast. Some intersections turn green, but by the time you put your foot on the pedal its already yellow so unless you step on it you're kinda forced to run a red light. There are also intersections in town where if you try to turn left or right you are just stuck there forever because one light will turn green before yours and by the time you can go a steady flow of traffic is happening so you have to wait for someone kind enough to let you go, or to where you can gun it before another person comes to the light.
Tip for your motorcycle - stick a really strong, small neodymium magnet in the bottom of the fairing if it's a sport bike. Bikes with aluminum frames and motors don't trip the light well, but the magnet disturbs things to induce the desired signal.
I've even seen an interesting case where a smart traffic light gives priority to a side and not main street. It works because a) it's a T-junction with one street being a one-way exit street and b) the traffic volume is low on the side street so the main street still maintains a flow of traffic.
I love the lights that are sequenced. None where I live but in another town I frequent, main street lights up and all the lights from the first one where you enter the town(from my side) then across the bridge to the other string of lights for blocks all timed so that if you do the speed limit, it will turn green right when you hit it, thing of beauty.
Someone said, "Linus steps down as CEO just so he can tell us about traffic lights". What actually needs to be understood is the wisdom in what he said. Linus is a creative force, the livewire behind the LMG content we like to watch. Despite the quality of the people at the firm, Linus is the secret sauce and needs to deploy his talents in the best way - which isn't doing CEO stuff. I am looking forward to seeing what fizz and fun the Linus mojo delivers for us! 🙂
Timing lights to repeatedly stop cars and disincentivize speeding often backfires. There’s a road near me that everyone drives 5-10 over specifically because that’s the only way to make the light at the top of the hill, due to poorly considered “traffic calming”. I’m fairly confident that the lights are timed that way for traffic calming rather than out of necessity because whenever it’s snowing, ice on the top of the hill from cars having to start from a red light becomes a concern, and the road is suddenly timed perfectly for the speed limit.
Many places in my home town of Odense, Denmark has started to implement radars to detect bikes and cars. Works better than induction loops and does not require any work if the road gets repaved.
I know in my little town of Sioux Falls, SD we also have some stretches of road that have cameras that are used to gather more information that just the coils can. The cameras can see multiple vehicles waiting in line where the induction coils can only see if there is one vehicle. Then they are all tied together like the other systems and are able to coordinate lights along that corridor.
You didn't mention that some lights have cameras that detect cars through the cameras instead of a wire in the ground. Though many lights are still on a timer and even if no one is coming the other ways, it'll still take a little bit before it decides to go green for you sometimes. Or if it just turned red when you arrived and then you're waiting extra long because of the timer.
Or come to my small city, where they have sensor lights, but they dont always work great, often giving the arrow when no cars are present, or occasionally not detecting my small car causing me to get stuck. This is especialy annoying at left on green arrow only lights. Plus none of them seem to coordinate well with each other. When there are pairs of lights next to each other, often the lights will be so out of sync that it causes the main direction of traffic to only get a few cars through per cycle. There was also one time where the sensors on a light were broken for probably close to a month, causing each cycle to take as long as possible, regardless of if there is a single car coming from the secondary road or turning left onto it, so I would be stuck at a light for over a minute for literally no reason. Needless to say, our lights need a lot of work.
There's this one photo enforced light in my area that swear is programed to try and make you run it. I do a fair bit of late night driving. I'll be the only car on the road approaching it and like clockwork every time I get close to it it will turn red, with no other cars at the intersection. Then it will make you wait a solid 5 minutes (not an exaggeration) if you stopped for it.
Funfact, in Estonia during the night most lights blink yellow and its up to driver to check if the intersection is free to go. Keep in mind that Estonia is a tiny country with rather small population, so something like that would not be possible in most of the big cities.
More people live within 10km of where I'm sat right now in the UK than the entire population of Estonia. Kind of crazy when you think about it!
We have the same solution in Poland. Even in big cities. There is a blink yellow light after 23 o'clock on all (most of) crossroads.
Same in India also, after 12 or 1 in the night upto 5 or 6 in the morning, the lights flash yellow to tell to driver to be alert.
In the US in a small farmtown in New York all of our lights change to blinking yellow at 10pm or so we do still have sensors at our main street intersection.
They could do reg flashing lights, which is a stop. Make it yellow flashing on one way, the most "busy" one at night.
Linus steps down as CEO just so he can tell us about traffic lights. Nice!
He is still the president of the board though.
and talk about scat
I think people are forgetting that he still owns the company lol
@@bdcbenjie and that he is still CEO for another week! 😅
Much better job than CEO
Dutch traffic lights, and im sure other countries do this as well, have multiple loops. One multiple meters before the traffic light, one at the stop line, one after the stop line and one in the intersection. All to detect stuck cars, incoming cars or standing cars. They also use the loops after the stopline to detect cars crossing a red light to delay a green if necessary
There's most of the time 3 in front of the stop sign some even more, and these allow a few things
- have lights be red by default at night and turn green just in time (done to make the green useful so people don't ignore red lights at night)
- allows that one speedy car in the closing time to regain a green light just a second after it gone red (used that trick daily 😁)
- detect if a car is not stopping, and turn the other lights to red for safety
- detect an approximation of the amount of cars waiting and assign priority to give green and the time it's green (but this also means the system can be tricked)
- detect the current traffic flow
and there's probably even more things that can be detected with just using multiple induction loops
@@TinusBruins and i hope they someday implant that to in Belgium , now i am stuck waiting for 5 min on a street with no traffic at 2 AM
@@PowerChaos Did that light ever turn green? 🤪
Where I live, they use cameras rather than loops. It will see people approaching ahead of time, and it also works with motorcycles! The only problems come if you are on an asphalt-colored motorcycle wearing asphalt-colored gear, or when it's snowing, but they detect the snow problem and turn into normally timed lights
They have two of them sometimes in urban settings like Hamilton and Toronto. You can still trip them by strategically stopping on two at once. It helps if you have a bigger car, but I've been able to trip them in a Matiz (something about as long as two bicycles).
A neat feature of Munich's traffic lights is that the buses are connected to the traffic lights and almost always have green.
Why r we not funding this
Why isn't that a thing in the entirety of Germany?
@@C4Oc. It might be... IDK though
@@C4Oc. I mean Dresden uses seperate traffic lights for tram and buses, wich works fine, but definitely isn't the smartest solution by any means.
Los Angeles does this after a certain hour except it's red lights
I am the CAD operator for a US state DOT that makes the drawings/tables/what ever else for a road when it comes to traffic, and when I saw this vid I had to watch. This is a very very good broad understanding of the tech involved and the graphics with the detection loops were a good opening. Generally the detection loops on my area, a state, are more than one deep; also video detection has become very much more preferred but works very much in the same space, but not induction based, image based. Another thing is the mention of smart cars, now where I live and work is.... well not a metropolitan area, lets call it spars, think central US. To my knowledge there were ZERO inaccuracy's within this video, I am not a traffic engineer just the guy that makes the drawings, but to my knowledge this is a pretty good general assessment of how things are done and what is to come. In the coming years, your car will cellularly report its GPS location and receive information for said location based on what is happening. There are companies out there already doing it and its really cool for traffic flow. It will be dynamic timing of lights/phases of signals based on needs, rather than best educated guesses. Autonomous travel, when fully adopted will take a lot of time out of travel because, they need to know where your car is to help.
Once every single vehicle is autonomous on the road, there won’t be a need for red lights or stop signs anymore. Once they all can communicate with each other and know where and how fast they’re going, they will just zip along and basically never stop moving, unless there’s an incident.
Very true, in 30-40 years if not longer.
@@bones_duece5286 yeah, I’m 39… I’ll be lucky to see it in my lifetime.
We were sitting a red light in traffic a few days after watching this video. My 5-year-old son, who I didn't think was paying much attention, starts spouting off about the box at the intersection and its programming. Kudos for explaining red lights in a way that a kid can not only understand, but regurgitate.
Here in my (rural) city in Germany it's actually the other way around for many traffic lights funnily enough: During times of high traffic they are on a time while during the night they are just all red until someone approaches the traffic light. Probably that's because you don't want people to speed during the night or so and during high traffic there's someone waiting at each end anyways, so the induction coils (and cameras) don't get you much as they are just triggered all the time.
> Probably that's because you don't want people to speed during the night or so
Or maybe it’s so that they can quickly turn green when they detect an approaching car.
@@ThePC007 Yeah but there's clearly a main street that 90% of the cars come from in the night and it seems to be clearly timed to turn green, if you slow down to like 30 km/h instead of the allowed 50 km/h
Most places I've seen at night will go into a demand mode where the primary traffic direction is green with the others being activated on demand as someone hits the sensors. They will also generally still be on a timer and run through a short cycle for the secondary directions every few minutes even without the sensor. Just in case either the sensor has failed or there's a Linus on a motorbike stuck there waiting.
Here in Estonia, most of the lights will start blinking yellow meaning slow down and check if you can go. Works pretty well as there aren't many people driving during the night. No need to run all the AI crap and whatever for just 3 people
@@offsetmonkey538 We have the same thing on some traffic light but here they just straight up turn it off, which means: treat it as if there was no traffic light at all.
NotJustBikes did an interesting video on Dutch intersections, and how they have shorter delays between the red light in one direction and the green light in the other direction.
It’s really worth a watch if you want to see other approaches to traffic management
yea.. we here have pretty decent traffic flow management (so called green zones make sure that for straightforward going traffic each follow up traffic light will turn or is green when you approach it during busy traffic hours and stays on orange about 20 seconds longer than normally), not on turn traffic lights though… good tip is to also try to follow the public transport busses as these can request green lights to be on time at each stop)
I recommend anyone to at least take a look at NotJustBikes
Definitely worth a watch. Dutch traffic control is far more advanced than north america or Australia's. I guess part of it is their comprehensive attempts at traffic management which includes prioritizing non-car-based modes of transport.
Exactly, when a city prioritize bikes, pedestrians and public transportation, even Car traffic gets better. Less cars, less jams. Linus could be a support in this cause!
@@goozbaghali Indeed, we have lights (and infrastructure overall) to prioritize on transporting people instead of transporting cars. Which, for example, gives way to many more cyclists and public transport on their routes. Also we have different routes for different modes of transportation. And also optimized for distance and average speed. For example a longer but faster route for motor traffic and a shorter but slower route for cyclists. Which means they both arrive at the same destination around the same time. (still depends on distance though).
Also our traffic lights are smarter and will give green when no other traffic is detected, has detection loops in cycle paths and even on some walkways. Takes also the speed of each mode of transport in consideration. Has early detection (100-300 m before the lights). And a shorter wait time overall.
Living in Sydney, I can say "That's cool, but it still doesn't stop the traffic jams!" We still need to keep growing public transport. And the bike lanes are in terrible need of more love.
bike lanes are in terrible need of being ripped out. cyclists are see you next tuesdays. as a pedestrian i despise lycra wearing homosexuals. they either ride at 50km/h on pedestrian paths or at 15km/h on roads. they never use the bike lanes and they ignore all road rules. they are a danger to everyone including themselves.
Yeah not wrong, try sitting on the Great Western highway at around 4:30pm any weekday, the traffic lights let's 4-5 cars through at a time and the traffic is banked up for kilometres.
This is the comment I was looking for. I’m sceptical that computers and AI can solve the physical problem that is the immense amount of space (for driving and parking) that personal vehicles require
Came here to say this - from an improving Fake London!
Yeah I really wish pt in aus got some more love...
Not the video we expected, but the video we needed
Garuda moment
Now time for more Tom Scott videos on traffic lights? lol
We didn't "need" it.
Honeslty they could talk about anything with a point to learn and I’ll watch
Theres always that one guy who comments the same played out lines on every video
Fun fact: some states have exception laws that allow you to go thru a red light if you’re stuck, especially for motorcyclists [I presume so you don’t, say, have someone on a bike stuck in a torrential downpour for 10 extra minutes because the light doesn’t want to change]. CHECK YOUR LOCAL TRAFFIC LAWS AND ASSUME THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS UNTIL YOU KNOW OTHERWISE.
They have that here but it's less-than-helpful when you have to cross five lanes of busy traffic.
@@chaos.corner yeah, I think most are for like, “you’re sitting for 5 minutes with zero cross traffic”
@@DoctorX17 Here it's just if you know the light is malfunctioning which can be kinda tricky to discern and with sensor lights, safe breaks in traffic can be rare.
What does "being stuck" mean in this context? Aren't you always "stuck" when in front of a red light?
@@TimmyM I think it's stuck without traffic on the intersection. (idk the exact laws)
It's so cool to see advanced traffic lights technology like this.
While in Indonesia, almost all traffic lights still use traditional timer. In my area, you get 60s red and 20s green, and may vary in another area (there are particular place here that has 300s red light lol).
One interesting finding, some traffic lights timer depends on where you're going, i.e. it give you 60s if you go straight, but only 15s if you turn right.
Pancoran lights anger me so much, they are red for 3 minutes but green for 10-25 seconds
wire inductor is also used in older traffic lights. New ones use a combination of camera, IR, radar, etc... and they connect with each other to synchronize traffic flows. Where I live (far north Peoria, AZ), they have put in smart lights in all intersections and the lights change for you as you drive up to the intersection... its so freaking awesome... The entire north end of the city has blown up over the last 15-20 years and this area they put in all new smart systems from new... and the main road from the freeway up the center of the section where hundreds of thousands of homes and business are, they are using machine learning to synchronize the entire 10 miles and all side roads... so if your in a group of cars coming off the freeway, you will be getting green the entire way through, and all side lights are timed in their rows and the model adjusts to the second so its always building and learning.
Fun fact, either SCATS or Surtrac or SCOOT or whatever adaptive or AI signal system requires so many new installations of detectors that cities can rarely find the money to fund such upgrades. The travel time saving from Surtrac and alike are suspicious because the intersections are often so carefully chosen from places that were somewhat congested but not hosed by freeways or other roadway constraints so that in fact any signal timing technique that uses some kind of coordination and dynamic real-time retiming technique will show a good improvement. There’s no need to hype up the future of AI in improving traffic, because it really can’t do that much.
Finally, a comment from an experienced Transportation/Traffic Engineer I was looking for, since I'm one too.
I see the biggest "benefit" will be mass surveillance for tracking people and their behaviors/habits/market analysis.
Also Sydney traffic is still really damn bad.
@@acters124 detectors don’t track people. Not every word related to “detect” is evading your privacy. Detectors merely sense whether a vehicle is present before the stop bar, so the output is 0 or 1, that’s it. Even camera detectors do the same thing, they see a vehicle show up in the frame, and send an input to the signal controller. For cameras to track people, it has to have a license plate reader (or worse, facial recognition algorithm), which will require the passing of local legislation to be used such as red light enforcement or bus lane enforcement cameras.
Exactly this. I am genuinely interested in Surtrac though. Only heard bad things about scats
We're actually using camera-based detection with machine vision at some sites down here in Minnesota. Come take a look!
(edit: they can also measures speeds and count and classify the cars, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, and cyclists...)
SODA!!!!!
@@MajliTechIt's "pop!" And, "Duck, duck, GRAY duck." Just sayin' ಠಿ_ಠ
Probably not St. Cloud, MN, based on recent experience. ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
@Coolesding The traffic lights in my German city is seemingly designed to turn red just as you arrive from the previous traffic light. They are very efficient at making you burn as much fuel as possible, lol.
Yay 1984
Hi from the Netherlands! Why induction only at the stop light, if you can also detect it upon approach? Most busy intersections can detect up to 3 car lengths here, and will quickly switch to green if you are on the slow approach.
Also, what we really want is you take the bike if possible, so within cities, cyclist get green quicker than car traffic. We even have infrared camera's for cyclist detection in some cities. You can do this for pedestrians too, on top of the waiting button for pedestrians.
So if you really want better traffic, making cycling paths for those on the short commute is good option.
And for anything longer: good and frequent public transport, combined with affordability measures, make for good ways of shifting commuters from the car to bus, metro, tram or train.
Really the worst you can do is build your road system in such a way, that you need a car for everything, which results in people on the road who are forced to, not because they can or want to. Grocery stores in your neighborhood that are reachable by foot are vital infrastructure.
#NotJustBikes
Someone's been Orangepilled 😁
Orangepilled and based
This is north America, we get stuff here 20 years later. People are wowed by parking lot stall availability 7 segment displays and overhead LED (Red = taken, Green = free) - This was in use in Korea since the early 2000s. Everyone here is like "wow how high tech" - dude, a 286 computer runs Canadian Tire's automated search and retrieval system, which has roots in the 80s - this is not ground breaking stuff.
Where I live they have moved away from using induction loops and now use phased array antennas (the white squares you see mounted on the poles angled towards each direction). I saw a demonstration while in school showing how they could discern each of the individual cars (as well as motorcycles) including which lanes they were in and how fast they were traveling. Much more effective than the induction sensors
I work for the company that likely makes the ones you are talking about (based on descriptions and us being the market leaders). Not only do our sensors look at the stopbar to know when cars arrive, but we can look several hundred feet up the approaching lane to see oncoming traffic. One benefit of this is that it can hold a yellow light if it detects you going a certain speed and it thinks you are not going to stop (that's the simple version at least). This results in a proven decrease in mid-intersection accidents!
@@dylbarton We've had these in the UK for ages. Late at night it's possible to see the controller skip parts of the sequence so that you get a green light faster.
Nice, Infrastructure Tech is a less talked about topic and its always fascinating learning how it operates. Thanks for this type of content.
For more - there's also Road Guy Rob, who does more in-depth (US) road infrastructure stuff.
*it's (contraction of "it is" or "it has")
its = possessive
@@tamius-han Yup, Road Guy Rob has excellent content
@@alvallac2171 what are you on? no one cares 💀
@@tamius-han Bingo. I knew Road Guy Rob would be mentioned in the comments.
In the UK most of our lights are either induction like you mention or have MVD’s installed (microwave vehicle detectors) installed that can see a car approaching the light at a greater distance then induction so that the car doesn’t have to stop when approaching if the junction is clear from other directions
Came to the comments to say this. And we've had them for ages, 1980s I think.
The sensors are not pre-emptive by themselves, they can't see traffic approaching or the number. They are now adding systems & integration as you said.
But it's not perfect because they can wire them wrong. Huge queue of traffic down the mountain, the more they try to extend the green light, the more it's red because they wired/labelled/programed it wrongly.
They should have video cameras watching traffic, identifying types of vehicles, number plates & speed. It sees you coming & can change lights before you get to the usual sensor. It could keep track of your usual trips, predict where vehicles are going & model multiple possible timings to optimise flow, reduce trucks having to stop. Smart grid. Lots of value judgements, someone else will usually loose for you to gain.
In the US. MVD is short for Motor Vehicle Devision , and every type of service they offer is NOT FREE, it's not even free to downgrade your license
When I was a kid, the stop lights in my town all used to turn into flashing lights after a certain hour at night. Flashing yellow for the busier road, and flashing red to act as a stop sign for the less busy crossroad. At some point this changed, and now we all get to sit around at red lights at 2am when there's not another soul in sight. What an improvement...
Worst light I've ever come across was one miles out in the middle of nowhere on the way to my mom's house. There is _never_ traffic at that intersection, and the light is timed with some _insanely_ long cycle. No idea why the light is even there; a stop sign would be far cheaper and far more effective.
In Vancouver, left turns at intersections are designed for 3 vehicles to activate the left turn advance. If two vehicles are lined up, most likely the left advance won’t trigger because of where the pads are placed, the second car won’t be on those, you can by pass this by stopping a little farther from the car in front of you.
Same in Toronto - just stop over the last two, they're usually less than a foot apart. Works 80% of the time.
I got stuck in a turning lane once in an older section of a busy road, but the traffic lights were using the pressure wires. We were the only ones in that turn lane for over 30 minutes with breakfast in the car, just watching traffic switching N+S, E+W, and even the turn lane in front of us. We drove back and forth in hopes to trigger the wires, but it didn't work. We started to started to consider other options, because it really seemed like we would never be let out of that lane, but then a vehicle entered the lane behind us and it finally let us go. Later on those lights where changed during road re-construction.
Glad you mentioned the motorcycle issue, but it is worse than that, many appear to have trouble detecting motorcycles even if you do drive over them.
There's lots like that in my area too. If you follow those induction loop wires, it'll lead to a cover on the side of the road. In the UK where I am, we can contact the local council and they'll send out an engineer to adjust the sensitivity so it'll detect motorbikes again (The sensitivity drifts with age apparently)
Another work around is to use the kickstand, put the motorcycle in neutral, open the kickstand over an edge of the loop
@@th3d3wd3r I'm in the UK too... and I think you'll find that depends a lot on the council... I know I have been on to mine a number of times about the issues, and so did a colleague of mine who was a local politician, with no success.
A lot of motorcycles use fibreglass etc so there isn't enough metal to trigger the signal, same with bicycles. They need a pretty big chunk o' metal to trigger reliably.
Maybe this can be fixed by putting some neodymium magnets at the bottom part of the bike?
I used to work for my state's Department of Transportation. Even in my rural US area induction loops are nearly all phased out. Now we use video cameras with user specified detection zones, and they're actually pretty simple to understand the concept. You just box out where you want it to consider as the waiting area for cars, and you can specifically X out areas that shouldn't be looked at too.
The signals run at a set interval, but detections can allow for extra time, like to give a green left arrow only when the left turning lane has someone. Sometimes they link them so you "ride the green wave", but most aren't that busy (rural) so they just let them operate independently. Also after the DOT installs them it's up to the townships to maintain them, and sometimes they poke with the timings and screw it all up lol.
They can have multiple schedules too. Really late at night we typically put them on blink, blinking red means treat it like a stop sign and blinking yellow means roll on through cautiously. When a train comes through they can handle that. During set peak times, like a light next to a school or large business, a light can have a different schedule to handle the brief traffic peak too
1:22 spotted you used „Rondo ONZ” (eng. United Nations roundabout) in Warsaw, Poland. Nice to see a familiar place in LTT video 😁
Polish people when Poland gets mentioned on the Internet (I’m Polish too, GO POLAND)
It's always nice to see familar places from Poland, even knowing that it's taken from a stock footage site
The light is red, nobody is around... except the cop behind the bush on the side of the road waiting.
When you are in a bike/scooter/motorcycle you can still trigger the induction detector at a light. You need to ride on either side of the circle instead of in the middle (of the lane). When you cross the detector in the middle, these small devices only cross ~10% of the detector. If you go on either side, you get closer to 50%.
You can also move back and forth over the detector to make sure it senses you.
Works every time for me.
I've seen where they've placed induction detectors in the bike lane
In the netherlands those loops arent circles, but rectangles. An advantage from this is that you can have them wider, or longer depending on its use. The one at the stop line is usually set more sensitive aswell to make sure bikes and such are always detected.
In Brazil lights will change to flashing mode during the night and in most large cities with high crime rates you're usually allowed to drive through red if you don't hit your car, at your own risk, so you're not robbed/mugged (some cities allow for you to do that as early as 7 pm). It's not unusual to see signs stating the time it's allowed to do that. Plus you can do it anytime of the day if your life is in danger by a criminal with a gun etc.
Well for a criminal back up then go GTA on them aim at them. Believe me the last thing on their mind will be car theft.
@@gorkskoal9315 You have to live there to understand what I mean. My last 2 cars there were bulletproof, so I could stop at red lights at ease. Traffic congestion and entering my garage too.
@@TheSimArchitect man what the hell is going on in Brazil that you need to be batman and have a bulletproof car lol
@@nerd2544 Well, it's not something new. I thought people knew...
Working 2nd shift, there's one thing I notice that can happen at a certain intersection: One of the induction wires gets damaged, always thinking cars are waiting there. This is especially annoying when it happens on a less traveled side street. It will always change to a hefty-length green, even when no cars are waiting for the light, giving the main road a long red (and yes, it is a car-detecting light, not a simple timer one).
Sadly, those lights often do not consider cyclists and pedestrians. The Netherlands (as mentioned in some other comments already) tries to detect them as well.
And I sure hope those fancy schmancy new technologies and neural networks are not too car-centric.
You will need a car to get anywhere and you will be happy
@@tonnentonie2767 You will own nothing and you will be happy
@@tonnentonie2767 I'm living proof you are wrong good person lol... Though based on the half assed decisions our loving regional transit systems (and in turn the Gov refusing to fund them to entice riders to return) have decided to put into play, while more expensive, driving does look mighty tempting, just so I don't get stranded...
But don't cyclists ignore red lights and just run through them? They seem to think the highway code doesn't apply to them.
Where I live in the UK, at some pedestrian crossings there are cameras that seem to detect pedestrians and adjust the amount of time before the lights go red for the cars and the length of time the lights stay red for the cars depending on the presence of pedestrians
those lights that "discourage" speeding actually encourage it. If you speed fast enough, you can miss the red light if you know the street well enough! I dont wanna live on this planet anymore
Great explanation, surprised you didn't mention the growingly popular detection method of optical detection, using the cameras you see at the top of streetlights. This takes in image data from the street and detects a difference in luminance (sometimes color) to see if a car or other vehicle is present. Lasts way longer than the loops in the ground and is more effective in detecting things like bikes+motorcycles. Plus, in advanced configurations, can up the priority of a signal change if there is traffic backed up. (this is also sometimes done with loop detection)
I can't believe you didn't mention having multiple induction loops after one another. This is a system in the Netherlands, and it allows the traffic lights to turn orange (yellow in some countries) before the last car even drives over the last induction loop. This improves the traffic flow even futher.
Given how much I've biked/escootered in suburb/city areas, you start to notice these differences in cycles much more
One thing that few understand is DURING SATURATED periods (where the "line" or queue to a light never exhausts - that is, when there is "more than one cycle worth of cars waiting. In this situation, THE LONGER THE CYCLE, THE BETTER.
It's basic throughput. There is a loss of efficiency every time a light changes, from built in safety timing buffers, and from simple time to accelerate after turning green. Thus if there's a CONSTANT steady flow, the longer the better, as less loss during the changes - ergo reducing total wait time.
Pretty neat to see Carnegie Mellon's system here in Pittsburgh mentioned! Here in Pennsylvania we have the "Ride on Red" law. It allows you treat a red light like a stop sign within reason if you feel the stoplight has failed to detect you. The law was originally put into place for Amish buggies (PA problems... lol) and motorcycles but luckily they decided it should apply to everyone on the road.
As a fellow Pittsburgher some people use that to just go whenever they feel it like especially where I live which is sad and Oakland is a mess because they have so many hospitals near there so there is a million pedestrians and the pedestrians have the right of way always because of pa law but near me they just floor it near a pedestrian and don’t stop either
most states have a law of if the light doesn't switch after 3 minutes you may proceed through the intersection
That's really interesting to know. Many states let you turn right on red unless otherwise posted, but I've never heard of that.
PA's roads suck, but at least their laws (and drivers) aren't as bad...
2:50 I remember going into the master control building in the late 80s/90s as a school excursion in Australia to see how it all worked as my school happened to be near the building. It was amazing to see "VGA" monitors showing signal status of any intrestion, and our guide showing how he could even bring up status to see if pedestrian had hit the walk button at a particular interesction.🚦
In the netherlands we have those inductors in the pavement that even work on bicycles somehow
the simplified way it works: the loop creates an induction field around where it is, this field can reach up to 50cm depending on how strong or sensitive it needs to be. The way a car or bicycle is detected is because the field is constantly measured and when the metal goes through it, it will disturb its values somwhat.
What I think would be cool with this is an interconnected traffic network that works with not only traffic lights but cars as well. So if you put in your destination in, every traffic light and car along that route knows where you’re going (just not who you are or why you’re going there, just this car is going from A to B). If anything unexpected happens on your route, it’s communicated back to your car, which updates the route, and passes those changes along.
Then imagine something like that with more cars, and (when they’re good enough) self driving cars. With the self driving cars, not only could it know the route to take, but the speed as well and adjust to make the trip more seamless.
There was a stretch of road in Detroit, Michigan where if you were traveling the speed limit you could go for about 10 miles and have green lights all the way.
i do love the smart lights system, a simple detection ( camera or loop ) that turns the light on green when there is no traffic
so at the rush hour it use a timed system ( min - max ) , and after that it just counts the cars and make it green for the X amount of cars or swap when there are XX cars waiting on the other side
This makes driving at the less buzzy hours just so much more better then waiting all the time for a "useless" red light, longest time you need to wait at a red light is 30 seconds and mostly the light jumps to green when you are approaching it
The group of cabinets you see on the side of a traffic signal contains all the automation to manage it. It's done by a programmable logic controller tied into some regional network.
A lot of times when the traffic signal is new it usually works properly. But, power outages will be a problem and may cause the PLC to run on 1 default schedule no matter what. Now days UPS's are installed at the signals because shutting power off to a plc creates issues like sitting at a red light with no cross traffic. Unless the DOT setup the schedule that way.
A place I uses to live had a three way intersection on a timer. This place got super busy during rush hour and the council did nothing to improve the system.
There where 3 crossings that had buttons to let the system know you wanted to cross, but it didn't change how the lights worked. It just turned on the walking green light and sounded the crossing sound when the one you where waiting at went red.
Linus stepping down and being more involved makes me happy
some cities in the UK also change depending on speed of traffic, if you drive like you are driving an 18 wheeler, so slow acceleration from stationary, then all the lights ahead will be green as long as you don't break the speed limit. whereas if you stop at a traffic light that is red, and accelerate like the bat out of hell, you will be stationary at every single traffic light while the person who didn't accelerate like the bat out of hell maintains speed all the time without having to majorly slow down, more common for late at night though, as too much traffic during the day.
We have this in the Netherlands too. Its called the green wave. You have to accelerate normally and abide the speed limit.
The traffic lights in my German city seem to be designed to turn red just as you arrive from the previous traffic light, thus ensuring that you burn as much fuel as possible.
It’s honestly infuriating, especially when much poorer countries, such as Belarus or Rwanda have those awesome traffic lights with LED timers on them to let you know when you can take your foot off the gas and downshift because the light is about to turn red.
This is for "sAfTy ReAsOnS"
Another joke is to convert one lane into a bicycle lane, so that the city is even more clocked up.
Look at it from a different perspective, maybe the lights are designed that way to discourage drivers to speed through a place where people live. By making car travel slow, public transport gets more appealing (and cheaper), it will make walking and cycling more appealing. All result in less pollution, less noise pollution, fewer traffic accidents, and a better walkable place.
@@michielvoetberg4634 A row of traffic lights near where I live does this and you need to speed to catch the next green. Going the speed limit will result in lights turning red just as you get to them. If anything, it heavily incentivizes speeding
@@Maboidatboi It's scientifically proven that a city won't get more clocked up on the long run when you turn car lanes into cycling lanes
@@michielvoetberg4634 Ironically, speeding would allow you pass the red light, since it’s synced in such a way that it turns red just as you arrive from the previous light, assuming you’re driving the speed limit. Plus, if they made the lights turn red sooner, people would let go of their gas pedals to save gas and therefore drive slower.
The lights in my town, absent traffic pattern changing, will default to if you're cruising down the street at right around the speed limit, the lights will stay green for you. Many is the time late night where I will be doing the speed limit, someone comes rushing around me, and then they're stopped at the red light that turns green just before I would need to brake for the red. I slide right past them in the next lane, move over to the right, and then we do the same sad thing all over again.
And then you just look at them and shake your head.
Interesting video. It would be nice if all stop lights converted to blinking reds or yellows at night ( or slower hours) to reduce waiting times.
I live in Perth Australia. we have pretty bad traffic issues here, but when it comes down to it, it's how people react to traffic and use the roads properly and road rules etc etc
Start using more roundabouts (traffic circles) and you don't have to wait as much and it'll reduce accidents. It's tested and proven in many places. When I lived in the US (I'm from Sweden) I hated that you almost always had red lights or stop signs as it takes more time and increases risk for accident since you get irritated 😊
Agreed, and circles have been going in around the US for the past decade--we finally got the memo. :D
Gah, roundabouts. We'll eventually start calling them the right thing too.
I live in the northwest US, and around here I feel like everyone I have talked to about roundabouts despises them. I think they're a great idea, but I guess because they are a pretty new and fairly uncommon thing here, people don't like the change.
Traffic lights in England are programmed in many ways mentioned here, like timers and induction loop sensors. Most traffic light based systems actually use a process called VA or "Vehicle Actuation" where a small black box (normally attached to the traffic light head) sends out a low level radar ping over a certain distance. If this ping hits anything traveling over 2.5mph, the radar ping will reflect back into the VA sensor registering "Demand" for that light to change. Sometimes the lights change automatically if there is no "Registered Demand" on the other phase (side of the lights), and sometimes where there is demand, a "Maximum Green" timer is enforced, to which the traffic light can only remain green for a certain time before having to give way to the other phase's demand.
FACT: here in district 16, in Sacramento, California, we only have timers on the lights. We have sensors set up all throughout the city, you see them on every single traffic light. None of them are operational.
We found that a few years ago if you time the lights to turn green if you are going exactly the speed limit on that street, people feel confident about continuing to speed.
But at the traffic lights that we have cameras to set up for… We time those for 5 miles an hour under the speed limit. This incentivizes last minute bird house through a red light bringing us $500 every time somebody does it.
Shut only that, but we also get increased budgets for our court houses and administrators, who are all on unions, and have huge amounts of voting power
The reason why we don’t take peoples license away when they are repeat, DUI offenders… Is because more than 40% of our cities revenue comes from DUI arrests. If we took their ability to drive away, we wouldn’t have as big of a union, and our voting power wouldn’t matter as much meaning, less raises and less incentives
Where I drive many of the cities use camera's as sensors. During high traffic times the lights coordinate with others along the route and during low traffic times, like middle of the night, they detect the vehicle approaching and if there is no cross traffic on the major road it will turn the light green before you get to the light if you are doing the speed limit. If you are driving on the higher traffic road at night all you see are green lights but if you are travelling too fast the light will turn red before you arrive then back green when you slow down.
Ok, now check out dutch trafic lights because those are about 20x more advanced than anything in north America. Pretty much all traffic lights have these loops, but not only at the stopping line, but also way before the light to measure traffic density, have lights turn green before you come to a stop on empty street crossings and in addition all this stuff for bikes and pedestrians separately. Most traffic lights are interconnected and they even take weather conditions into account. Like mentioned in other comments, not just bikes on youtube has some amazing videos explaining how it works.
If your lights are only using loops as a detector they are pretty dum.
@@Klub4143 unlike shown in the video we dont just use 1 or 2 loops. we always have several, ive seen a single lane have 8 of them, and they can be far away so you can be detected from 2-300m away. Besides that the systems have already been communicating with eachother for over a decade.
Fun fact: For law enforcement concerns, some traffic lights in Brazil get radars to get people who are advancing on a red light. But for security concerns, some of them are turned off from the late night till early Morning
We see that here in the US as well, though some states have banned their use.
If you have a motorcycle, a neodymium magnet (or a few) stuck to the bottom can sometimes help you get picked up by the detector when you otherwise wouldn't.
I actually don't believe that's the case. I'd love to see it tested.
I have my doubts on how affective that would be. I've got a shit load of N55 magnets in my motor and that doesn't help at all. Not to mention phase coils carrying hundreds of amps
Where I live, almost all are inductors. Those have a tendency to fail, especially in rain. I remember one night after a night shift at work, I was stuck at a red with a line of cars behind me. After a few phases, I ended up running it (and reporting the malfunctioning light). With as much power that these controllers have, they should at least be able to have resilience against failing sensors.
SCATS? come on guys.
Really says something about Sydney. Either they are a fan of Scatman John, or they have very strange desires.
In NY there's a bus service called the SCAT bus
I build intersections for a living. Another key aspect in major cities for vehicle detection is in the use of cameras. These cameras do away with the detection loops in the ground. The video detection cameras see a change in light, from the color of your car entering over asphalt, for a vehicle entering the intersection. There are other systems in the control cabinet that could also connect to the city's public transport that allows for buses to have faster travel routes. We have an optic fiber cables connecting every cabinet for fault detection and homogeneous timing.
Tips for changing the light. Don't pull too far over the white stop bar as it can sometimes put you outside of the vehicle detection. Vehicle detection is anywhere from 30-40 feet before the stop bar, so inching forward over the line isn't going to help you any.
Just north of Pittsburgh, we’ve been an early user/tester of CMU systems for years. Our area had grown very quickly that it was in need of help. We’ve continued to grow and it’s still a challenge at times, but not really worse than a decade ago. So I suppose it must be helping.
I take it it's Crannberry? I worked there and those lights crossing over 19 SUCK. It would take 15 min or sometimes longer to go from around the Goodwill store (west side of 19 on Freedom Rd) to Crann woods. Ironically I never even heard of Surtrac and I've lived here all my life
In the Netherlands traffic light also detect bicycles on special bicycle paths what is really awesome!
The interesting thing about the succession lighting is at least where I work, it's on a consistent loop. This means I can always catch the light leaving work if I leave at the right time without stopping (I walk) all the way to the transit hub nearby. When a pedestrian hits the button on the lessor used road to cross for said light the signals retime themselves to go back into sync meaning the lights will forever stay locked, this usually means the light will be either shorter or longer, usually shorter.
Also the signals displayed at 1:30 are a bad example, but due to location it might for safety reasons, as best to have staggered lighting vs synced as shown if you care about distance lower fuel use etc, also staggering lights based on speed would effectively kill long distance speeding as they'd eventually run into a red light that they would need to stop at instead of cruising threw all greens at the speed limit.
Linus just wanted an excuse to show off his motorcycle
Only one problem, that's not his motorcycle. He was planning to paint it pink with green stripes, now he has more time, maybe he will.
In the Netherlands most traffic lights are smart, they turn green based on where people are waiting
Never thought I would see Linus the IT guy talking about being stuck at a red light
Im reminded of a single stoplight on a super long stretch of road near me. It has a sensor above it that looks like a camera and in the early mornings and later afternoons when it doesnt have to address traffic then its green all the time... until a car is coming, then within breaking distance it will turn yellow to get them to stop. Im assuming its to demotivate speeding since its a REALLY long stretch of road, but i like to think that there is someone controlling it and chooses to fk with people who are just trying to get to work in the mornings.
Or, even better than self driving cars, actual public transportation.
THANK YOU IDK WHY LINUS DIDNT SAY THIS
@@Crosbie85 He lives in the standard American-Type city. I'd be surprised if he gave a shit about public transport for that alone, but also because he could more or less continue buying a new car each month to commute to and from work if he chose to. Not ragging on the guy for being rich, but he has no reason to think of a solution to a problem he doesn't suffer from.
I learned about and how to program the devices that control stop lights, Programable Logic Controllers, PCLs back in college. I'm glad that you guys covered where the triggering areas are for these as people that stop past the point are safety concerns.
PLCs were also used a lot in car assembly plants. Bramalea Assembly (Chrysler) always had problems with them.
People use our streets outside of motor vehicles too, a fact that channels like yours and CGP Grey all too conveniently ignore when they don't want to address the messy complications of optimizing traffic flow for cars at the expense of everyone else. Carbrain is a heck of a drug.
i wrote a screenplay where various AI models use the traffic AI to reduce the human population so they all can reach their goals. So a traffic AI would reduce congestion by having vehicles collide, thus removing them from circulation and improving efficiencies. For this to work, you need reliance and trust be established first.
Y'all remember that dude that discovered his city messed with the light timings in the more ghetto part of town so the cops could just constantly harass the residents for reasons you could guess? Stuffs crazy.
Also hearing Linus talk about scat(s) isn't how I expected my day to come to an end
Fr lmao
I'm a traffic technician and they are right. The county I manage uses road loops (lines in the roads), infrared, cameras and radar. Almost every intersection is connected to a fiber network that can alert us when something is wrong.
they didn't jet typed SCATS 💀
Interesting topic, it wasnt super computer related, but then it became. I guess tech can improve every single thing in life. Gotta love it!
Fun Fact: If you’re stuck at a light with a motorcycle, just turn it off and on again (not a joke) and it’ll trigger the light. The starters electromagnetic field will produce a large enough current to trigger the light.
@bestplayerhear sounds like some Rocky and Bullwinkle shenanigans.
Nah you gotta do the classic method of running over to the crosswalk button and pressing it
@@BanditLeader That's funny 🤣 with my luck it would just be a dummy crosswalk button that doesn't signal the lights to change.
The Netherlands has a system called iTLIs. It is also a smart traffic management system. The huge difference however is that it not only uses ground loops, cameras, buttons for pedestrians. But also navigation apps used in the Netherlands. It then uses all of this information to manage: cars, transit, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and other heavy vehicles and of course emergency services.
I would say this makes all the systems mentioned in the video look basic.
Here's my $100,000,000 idea to replace the traffic light induction loops. Make them NFC billing points instead. All lights stay red, and whoever pays more gets to have the green light first.
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This is the biggest scam bot thread I have seen on UA-cam.
In Southern IN and Northern KY, the further away from downtown you go, the more the lights simply shift to blinking yellow/red rather than normal cycling late at night. It works for us near a large city.
In Poland (thanks for showing Warsaw in the video, btw) on less attended intersections the lights go blinking yellow at night. Only the most frequented roads are kept on 'active duty'. Then it's all down to the traffic management systems which here combine traffic cameras and induction loops. In many cities they give priority to public transport, so if you see a tram, just like in the video from one of the roundabouts in Warsaw, then be prepared to wait. A long, long time.
I saw this a while back when I visited (maybe 5 years ago?) and was walking around at night. It will be decades before we get that kind of solution here in North America, if at all.
I know an intersection where the main road has green light at all times and the crossing road only get green light when the induction loops senses that a car has approached the stoplight. This can have pretty funny results. For one thing it seems to have a problem detecting bikes, so those used to it will roll up and use the button for pedestrians. But once I saw a driver who stopped about a two car lengths from the light and waited for green light. That was far enough that the car didn't register and so they were left waiting for close to ten minutes before someone passing by pressed the button used by pedestrians.
In my local area in the UK I'm pretty sure some sets of lights work on backwards logic - i.e, they go red as soon as a car approaches, green for the direction where there are no cars, then as soon as a car approaches from the clear direction those lights go red and the ones you've been waiting at then go green!
Pennsylvania passed a law years ago that, if the light is red and stays on red for longer than normal, you can treat it like a stop sign as long as there are no cars coming towards the intersection and it's safe to do so.
Where i live, there's a 4 way intersection where the inductors have only been laid on the straight lanes and the left turning lanes, because if there's no traffic, we're allowed to turn right on a red light unless a sign says the opposite. During the pandemic, they decided to add those signs. Now the problem is, on the main road the light is set to stay green at all times unless cross traffic is waiting. Not a bad solution, until you're in the rightmost lanes of said cross road and want to turn right. it will literally not turn green unless someone drives up on the center lane. I've timed it for fun one night because i had nothing to do. I stayed there for 12 minutes, and it never turned green for me. Now cops have had the genius idea to use it as a ticket trap. Lose patience and turn illegally, earn a ticket. you can contest of course, and you'll likely win too! but most people can't be bothered to try and end up paying.
The only time I ever had an issue was when I was at an 4 way and there was no traffic light, visibility was poor, and I got T boned in the front. I had to go to The courthouse to deal with it. The judge dealt with and dismissed everything (It was a backroads and I had no other citations) and that was it.
Outside of that, I’ve never had an issue in court.
My friend Daniel Sanders was literally reminding me daily for six months
If you drive a motorcycle and there are lights at night that won't change, one trick is to pop it in neutral and put your kickstand down on the loop. It's not 100% if the loop's sensitivity is just simply WAY too low, but on ones that miss your bike (especially happens to touring bikes that ride higher) the kickstand trick will make it register. Luckily for me as someone in an area with a few that fall into the way too low category, they made it legal to go through a red on a clear road after waiting for a certain amount of time, or a rotation of the opposite going red then back to green. Our lights are dumb... many people consider a yellow a sign to speed up around here because of it...
So... In Port Coquitlam, if you're heading east on Coquitlam Ave about to cross Oxford, the light will turn green for even a longboard. I do it all the time on my board late at night. I want to say it's an oversensitive induction loop, but it is also just two straight strips.
That's so cool. Here, where I live, half of the lights of the city doesnt work at all and the other half work in mysterious and random ways
Pretty sure my town is timer based, with the timer changing at night to be ridiculously fast. Some intersections turn green, but by the time you put your foot on the pedal its already yellow so unless you step on it you're kinda forced to run a red light. There are also intersections in town where if you try to turn left or right you are just stuck there forever because one light will turn green before yours and by the time you can go a steady flow of traffic is happening so you have to wait for someone kind enough to let you go, or to where you can gun it before another person comes to the light.
Tip for your motorcycle - stick a really strong, small neodymium magnet in the bottom of the fairing if it's a sport bike. Bikes with aluminum frames and motors don't trip the light well, but the magnet disturbs things to induce the desired signal.
I've even seen an interesting case where a smart traffic light gives priority to a side and not main street. It works because a) it's a T-junction with one street being a one-way exit street and b) the traffic volume is low on the side street so the main street still maintains a flow of traffic.
I love the lights that are sequenced. None where I live but in another town I frequent, main street lights up and all the lights from the first one where you enter the town(from my side) then across the bridge to the other string of lights for blocks all timed so that if you do the speed limit, it will turn green right when you hit it, thing of beauty.
This probably only works in one direction
@@magnusasskildt It does, because it's a one way street ;)
Someone said, "Linus steps down as CEO just so he can tell us about traffic lights".
What actually needs to be understood is the wisdom in what he said. Linus is a creative force, the livewire behind the LMG content we like to watch. Despite the quality of the people at the firm, Linus is the secret sauce and needs to deploy his talents in the best way - which isn't doing CEO stuff.
I am looking forward to seeing what fizz and fun the Linus mojo delivers for us! 🙂
Timing lights to repeatedly stop cars and disincentivize speeding often backfires. There’s a road near me that everyone drives 5-10 over specifically because that’s the only way to make the light at the top of the hill, due to poorly considered “traffic calming”. I’m fairly confident that the lights are timed that way for traffic calming rather than out of necessity because whenever it’s snowing, ice on the top of the hill from cars having to start from a red light becomes a concern, and the road is suddenly timed perfectly for the speed limit.
Many places in my home town of Odense, Denmark has started to implement radars to detect bikes and cars. Works better than induction loops and does not require any work if the road gets repaved.
I know in my little town of Sioux Falls, SD we also have some stretches of road that have cameras that are used to gather more information that just the coils can. The cameras can see multiple vehicles waiting in line where the induction coils can only see if there is one vehicle. Then they are all tied together like the other systems and are able to coordinate lights along that corridor.
You didn't mention that some lights have cameras that detect cars through the cameras instead of a wire in the ground. Though many lights are still on a timer and even if no one is coming the other ways, it'll still take a little bit before it decides to go green for you sometimes. Or if it just turned red when you arrived and then you're waiting extra long because of the timer.
CITY WORKER HERE! Not all cities use the same traffic light software. For instance, we use Tactics.
Or come to my small city, where they have sensor lights, but they dont always work great, often giving the arrow when no cars are present, or occasionally not detecting my small car causing me to get stuck. This is especialy annoying at left on green arrow only lights. Plus none of them seem to coordinate well with each other. When there are pairs of lights next to each other, often the lights will be so out of sync that it causes the main direction of traffic to only get a few cars through per cycle. There was also one time where the sensors on a light were broken for probably close to a month, causing each cycle to take as long as possible, regardless of if there is a single car coming from the secondary road or turning left onto it, so I would be stuck at a light for over a minute for literally no reason. Needless to say, our lights need a lot of work.
There's this one photo enforced light in my area that swear is programed to try and make you run it. I do a fair bit of late night driving. I'll be the only car on the road approaching it and like clockwork every time I get close to it it will turn red, with no other cars at the intersection. Then it will make you wait a solid 5 minutes (not an exaggeration) if you stopped for it.