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200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

112 points by svenfaw 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago
Demand traffic lights using a loop sensor that can pick up a car through magnetism are nothing new. They can be a problem for cyclists because many bikes don't have enough metal. There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road. They retimed it so this didn't work anymore.
- 317070 1y ago
  Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed for emergency services first, but is now expanded.
  - gregoriol 1y ago
    That seems an over-engineered, highly expensive and complicated to maintain on a road-lifetime scale system
    - antonvs 1y ago
      Taxi drivers might have said the same thing about Uber. These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established, and projects like this become possible precisely because they’re not that complicated to build or maintain. They take advantage of common infrastructure, and can often be cheaper than supposedly “simpler” alternatives.
      - LtdJorge 1y ago
        > These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established And as a side effect, we get very funny cyber-security news weekly!
      - gregoriol 1y ago
        How many news did we get recently about such "tech" products becoming disabled because 2G was gone, because the app was gone, ... Road lights should last 20+ years, no app/connected system will last that long.
        antonvs 1y ago
        Google Maps is 20 years old. The connectivity at the traffic lights can be a small box, easily replaced, much more cheaply than e.g. traffic sensors under the road. If the system fails for some reason, such as an internet outage, traffic lights can fall back to ordinary timing. You’re not raising serious objections.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Doing this with existing apps is probably a lot cheaper than installing cameras and traffic counting loops on every side of every intersection, which would be the alternative to this. The smart traffic light management systems are already in place in many intersections already, this is just hooking another source of traffic information into the system without having to dig open concrete or asphalt.
BrenBarn 1y ago
I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.
- lmz 1y ago
  If Google Maps had broadcast your individual(!) position and navigation intent to the local government people would scream about privacy. I'm not sure it's better when a local app does it.
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    I think I'd be more comfortable sharing my location with the Belgian government than with Google.
- CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
  It hardly seems like the Flemish government are going to create an app that's a serious competitor to Google Maps etc. Even just reaching something reasonably functional for driving directions would be an awful lot of work.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    There are some good open-source apps for driving directions. The big problem with those apps is often the lack of a source for live traffic information, but the government probably has something for that already, so hooking that up into an open-source app should be quite effective. Shouldn't be too hard to advertise an app if it means you see more green lights on your journey.
Stevvo 1y ago
"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.
- holowoodman 1y ago
  I guess they just want to collect movements of all their citizens, and this is their way to get at the data.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Belgium has intelligent traffic lights already. You can't use an app system like this without existing smart traffic light infrastructure. This just allows for better traffic flow management by predicting influxes of traffic along long roads. But, more importantly, it allows traffic planners to analyze popular sources/destinations on the road map. If 90% of cars turn left at a certain traffic light but only because the traffic light before it takes forever to turn green, they can tweak the scheduling to divide traffic more evenly. The obvious downside, of course, is that this data will quickly show individuals when analyzing patterns in remote areas.
- LtdJorge 1y ago
  Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Install my app to turn on the lights, install the app to see the menu at a restaurant, install the app to read information about an archaeological site, install an app to open the automatic doors. As you said, it's 100% the wrong approach.
  - create-username 1y ago
    You will soon be unable to cross the intersection unless you manually turn the light green from your mobile phone or wait until another authorised driver does it, in order to protect the children
  - tzs 1y ago
    > Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Except that's not what they want here. What they want is for the apps that most people already use to add support for this.
dalben 1y ago
Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.
- scoopertrooper 1y ago
  What are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?
  - __alexs 1y ago
    At least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.
  - dalben 1y ago
    The concern was related to being able to know where emergency vehicles were. If you build a system that announces to traffic light “I’m police/fire/EMS, coming through”, you also build an early warning system for criminals and terrorists who either want to avoid or target you.
    - mosselman 1y ago
      That doesn't make any sense. How would criminals know even if the traffic light receives a signal like that?
      - ralferoo 1y ago
        I think these systems used RF before, so anything in the vicinity could listen in. That said, if this new system is a phone app, it'll just be using phone data instead, so it'd be hard for that to be intercepted.
holowoodman 1y ago
This is solving the wrong problem. If a traffic light can turn green at a whim, for any arriving app user, the intersection is not busy enough to have a traffic light. Then the traffic light should be removed or switched off for those times, instead of getting a very expensive (I presume) upgrade. If the intersection is busy enough so that people are waiting on all (or most) stop lines, then simpler traffic density sensors are a better, less invasive, far cheaper, and more privacy-preserving option.
- antonvs 1y ago
  > simpler traffic density sensors …which in practice tend to be more expensive to implement and maintain. Systems like this one can work because they take advantage of highly available commodity infrastructure.
  - holowoodman 1y ago
    In the most cases, you should imho skip the traffic lights all together and use a roundabout. Automatically balancing, can work to large capacities (not as large as traffic lights, but visit France if you need to see how much traffic they can handle). No fragile electronics, no power consumption, less maintenance, less accident-prone (really!).
    - ztetranz 1y ago
      Yes roundabouts generally work well despite the fact that many American drivers seem to have problems with them. There are some traffic patterns where roundabouts don't do well. I've seen the following. Imagine a four way roundabout with north, east, south and west. Predominate rush hour traffic is towards the east. Heavy traffic entering from north. More entering from west. Most exiting at east with very little going around beyond west. Entering from south can be nearly impossible since they're waiting for a break from both north and west.
- rafram 1y ago
  Yeah, the US approach where low-volume traffic lights turn to flashing red (treated like a stop sign) late at night seems to work fine.
zspitzer 1y ago
In Melbourne, Australia, a long time ago, they embedded weight sensors in the road for a lot of intersections, so they can react dynamically to traffic conditions. I live in Berlin, which doesn't have such sensors and it's always frustrating waiting for lights to change when there's no traffic.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Are you sure they're using weight sensors? AFAIK wire loops seem much more useful, plus they have the advantage of also picking up bikes and other lightweight traffic more accurately. I can also tell you that even in a country with sensors all over the place, I do sometimes end up waiting on an intersection with no traffic. I assume it's some kind of public transportation/emergency vehicle priority system activating, or maybe it's an attempt to calm traffic downstream where loads of traffic has piled up already so intersections don't get blocked. Either way, adding sensors doesn't necessarily make traffic lights immune to unnecessary waiting times.
  - CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
    From what I've heard, they don't always use the sensors; sometimes they're on a fixed schedule during the day and on request only overnight. Or they might be a fixed schedule always; a classmate at uni did a project around modelling traffic flow and found an intersection or two that turned out to be configured differently from how the council expected; probably a setting that was changed once and never revisited.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      I've seen this happen as well, but on different time slots. I think some of it is intentional (the algorithm designed to regulate busy intersections across an entire main road probably doesn't work well when there are only a few people on the road). The ones that operate on a timer all day every day seem to be bugged out, though.
  - nosrepa 1y ago
    No traffic light uses weight sensors.
jeroenhd 1y ago
I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFIC_LIGHT&roadRegulatorId=&language=en https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI... I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong. Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.
- miggol 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing that link. The categories suggest that this system is mainly used to give priority to certain kinds of vehicles. Public transport and emergency vehicles already had a system to turn lights green, so this seems like an addition to extend the system to "milder" priority vehicles like construction without giving them access to the previous system. The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists. As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections. The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    > The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists. It depends on the city, but unless you're on the highway or about to enter one, a traffic light here can be assumed to serve bikes. I found that link a few years ago thanks to an app I used when I went to university: https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-groen/ https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-gr... The municipality has an app that will integrate with the iVRI system to have traffic lights turn green faster for bikes. It doesn't do anything for cars, it's built purely to try to convince more people not to travel by car. Of course, iVRI data providing information about incoming bicycles don't automatically reprogram traffic lights to give them priority. However, the information is available. I've had the Enschede app trigger a "this app requested X green lights during your ride" popup in other cities; I'm pretty sure it's just an iVRI integration, not one restricted by a specific municipality.
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
- yehoshuapw 1y ago
  I actually assumed that this is because the system tries to figure out where you will be by your planned route. so seeing the bike coming up is much later - for example when the bike will be coming around a corner
- dalben 1y ago
  That's not how it works - the idea is your navigation app signals the lights in advance. If you will reach red lights in 1km, the app signals this and the lights will be green before you're there, so you don't need to slow down.
  - arp242 1y ago
    Most people do not use a navigation app for most trips (i.e. commuting to work, grocery shopping, or whatnot).
- nanna 1y ago
  > Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic. The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything. Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic." > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 1y ago
karpour 1y ago
In Eindhoven, NL, there is a similar system without app. At night traffic lights are red by default, if sensors in the pavement detect an approaching car they turn green in time. If there are no other cars you never have to stop. Great system and has been there for a decade at least.
NovemberWhiskey 1y ago
Isn’t this what Car2X was supposed to do?
Havoc 1y ago
Surprised by the negativity here. This sort of predictive/automated traffic is a pretty clear win without a corresponding downside. Worst case scenario for all drivers is more or less same as dumb lights with fair bit of time saving potential
iLoveOncall 1y ago
250 intersections covered is nothing at all, I'm absolutely not surprised that private companies don't want to dedicate resources to interfacing with such a minuscule system.
PeterStuer 1y ago
Just in case you wonder, these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ https://be-mobile.com/ . They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.
- mosselman 1y ago
  That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy. When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license. Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone... In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.
- de_huit 1y ago
  Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...
password4321 1y ago
I am waiting for the day when every red light is a micro-auction to stop cross traffic sooner.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I went into the article assuming we were talking about the (illegal) Mobile Infrared Transmitters (MIRTs?) that were something like the phreaker "boxes" (somehow I thought they were called "Chrome boxes" but I can't find a reference now). (I'm pretty sure the U.S. emergency vehicles still have those — for which of course they are legal.)
kuon 1y ago
Here (switzerland) lights turn red on purpose to slow down traffic. The idea is that if you see a green light in the distance, you are motivated to speed up to catch it before it turns red. If it is red in the distance, you slow down because you eventually have to stop, and when you are like 20m from it, detectors will see you and turn it green.
- sschueller 1y ago
  Aka Grünewelle (Green-wave)[1] if you drive the speed limit every light you reach will turn green. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave
  - Noumenon72 1y ago
    Thanks for explaining, because the OP made it sound like the red light tricked you into wastefully shedding speed instead of letting you stay at the speed limit. Their language makes it sound like they view slowing traffic as intrinsically good, rather than just trying to prevent speeding.
    - kuon 1y ago
      I should have been clearer on two behaviors. What I describe is if you are "alone". Green light often (not everywhere) don't stay green if there is no car. But if there is traffic, it is made in such a way that when you get a green somewhere, you can expect every subsequent intersection to turn green when the head of the traffic arrives. So the first vehicle will see a red light turn green as they approach, and the ideal timing is around the speed limit. Further cars will have a green light, but with no intensive to speed as they are sandwiched between cars. Also I should say that this is empirical evidence based on about 20 intersections I pass often. I don't know how much of a rule it is country wise as I don't pay attention to that when I go places I don't routinely go.
- rob74 1y ago
  My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them. See also: people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane...
gadders 1y ago
Just installing this in my car so I always get a green light: https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traffic-jam/ https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff...
rob74 1y ago
> A simple example: at night, a main road mainly displays green, the side streets only get green for a very short time. If you arrive with the app from a side street, you can get green immediately, provided there is no traffic on the main road. In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.
- phkahler 1y ago
  I don't understand why they need apps for this either. The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.
  - bluecalm 1y ago
    We have those in Poland. Sucks if you are on a bike. You need to wait for a car to turn it green for you.
    - 6510 1y ago
      In the Netherlands we have ones that detect warm bodies.
      - hobofan 1y ago
        Sucks if you are a zombie...
        vrosas 1y ago
        Here in Zombieland we have cameras that can detect any bipedal movement.
kazinator 1y ago
Would this green light app be something that you would be fiddling with while driving, as you're approaching the target intersection?
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
As far as emergency vehicles go, we have had a system in place, around here, for years, where the vehicles have some kind of infrared device that forces the light green. Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn. I think there's also a black market for the devices for impatient drivers.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  >Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn. My local (EU) ER/ A+E hospital flashes up messages like "child emergency...all doctors called", "car accident, patient due in", "stroke victim, just admitted", and everyone just goes "ahhhh, fuck", and waits longer. I'd love to know the significant time lost, as a percentage of your life, with regards to the amount of time an ambulance could possibly delay you.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Not a big deal at all. Maybe 30 seconds at a time. Whenever I hear sirens, I always think "Someone is having a worse day than I am." Around here, we are pretty solicitous of emergency vehicles. We pull over, or don't enter an intersection, if we hear sirens. Every now and then, some inflamed hemorrhoid cuts off the fire truck, but it's rare.
6510 1y ago
I've been pondering this since the 90's. In my imagination the ultimate form is to have an auction with auto-bidding and minimum bids. If you haven't money you configure the app to collect only with a low minimum bid. When wealthy you have everyone wait for you. For example: From one direction 20 cars are approaching the crossing. Only 1 from the other direction. From the 20 car direction the highest minimum bid is 5 euro. For the single car to get priority they would have to pay 100 euro. The money goes in the other drivers account. Manual control is also possible. The wait time is displayed on the dash along with the fee. If the fee is below the configured maximum you can press a green button, if there are no higher auto-bids the light will turn green. If there are the fee increases for you to press the button again. It would finally provide a fun game for people with high testosterone issues so that they can assert their dominance by handing out free money. That you own a fancy car doesn't mean you get to go first, I have more money than you therefore you should wait while watching me cross the crossing. The old lady behind the Bentley also gets 500 euro in her account.
- lolc 1y ago
  Pay people to wait at intersections. What could go wrong?
whartung 1y ago
Late at night, at a friends house, and his car died, but I need a ride to my car. So, we took his motorcycle. We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way. Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat. Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back. This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red. Curses. We just ran that one.
- dpe82 1y ago
  In Wisconsin, motorcycles, bikes, etc. are sometimes allowed to run a red if they wait for 45s and there's no other traffic around: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/vi/37/1/c/4 https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/vi/37...
- diggan 1y ago
  > So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button [...] the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way. You mean the button for pedestrians to pass the crosswalk I guess? Why would it say "WALK" (be green for pedestrians?) and also be green for a vehicle to pass? The crosswalks around me are the reverse, if pedestrians can pass, no vehicles can pass, and vice-versa. Or maybe I misunderstood something?
  - ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
    Perestrians going in the same direction as traffic will generally get a walk signal when the traffic gets a green light.
byyll 1y ago
Lmao, an app.
elric 1y ago
I wish we would install beg buttons for drivers instead. Pedestrians keep drawing the short end of the stick in Flanders.
pftburger 1y ago
Title should read : Flemish tragic agency grumpy that google wont stream all drivers position to them in real-time.
imzadi 1y ago
This article is just the same three sentences written in four different ways.
jovial_cavalier 1y ago
Why does this need to be an app at all? Wouldn't it be simpler and more accurate to just use computer vision or other sensors? Isn't this just a cartoonishly obvious ploy to get you to install some malware on your phone that tracks where you go and when?
lofaszvanitt 1y ago
But for now, those talks have not yielded any results, so you have to turn to the smaller apps. --- THAT'S WHY YOU PATENT YOUR TECHNOLOGY!
lofaszvanitt 1y ago
Very good idea.
paxys 1y ago
So...let's give control of traffic lights to private corporations. Surely they won't figure out how to game it for profit, right?
smeej 1y ago
With all the data companies certainly have about traffic flow, it boggles my mind that there isn't a company out there selling city-wide "traffic light optimization" where they come in, analyze the data, and set the traffic lights to optimize traffic flow. Heck, sell it as a subscription where the analysis continues running and factors in things like major events or road closures automatically. Noise and air pollution would go down. Time waiting in traffic would go down. Crashes would go down. Of all the things that have been optimized in the worod today by algorithmic analysis of data, it just surprises me that this hasn't been one of them.
exiguus 1y ago
In amsterdam there are traffic light systems that prioritize their green phases and rhythms according to the number of traffic participants. For example, streetcars have priority 1, then buses, bicycles and finally cars. This works via weight or pressure sensors. No camera or app.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
metalman 1y ago
these traffic apps would have a lot more uptake if the options included labeling and graphics like used in classic games ......" The spell of passage", and for observing varios trafic laws , earn points and free tolls for bridges and hyways or other ways to pay for permiting and licensing

112 points by svenfaw 1y ago

Demand traffic lights using a loop sensor that can pick up a car through magnetism are nothing new. They can be a problem for cyclists because many bikes don't have enough metal. There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road. They retimed it so this didn't work anymore.

317070 1y ago
Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed for emergency services first, but is now expanded.
- gregoriol 1y ago
  That seems an over-engineered, highly expensive and complicated to maintain on a road-lifetime scale system
  - antonvs 1y ago
    Taxi drivers might have said the same thing about Uber. These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established, and projects like this become possible precisely because they’re not that complicated to build or maintain. They take advantage of common infrastructure, and can often be cheaper than supposedly “simpler” alternatives.
    - LtdJorge 1y ago
      > These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established And as a side effect, we get very funny cyber-security news weekly!
    - gregoriol 1y ago
      How many news did we get recently about such "tech" products becoming disabled because 2G was gone, because the app was gone, ... Road lights should last 20+ years, no app/connected system will last that long.
      - antonvs 1y ago
        Google Maps is 20 years old. The connectivity at the traffic lights can be a small box, easily replaced, much more cheaply than e.g. traffic sensors under the road. If the system fails for some reason, such as an internet outage, traffic lights can fall back to ordinary timing. You’re not raising serious objections.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Doing this with existing apps is probably a lot cheaper than installing cameras and traffic counting loops on every side of every intersection, which would be the alternative to this. The smart traffic light management systems are already in place in many intersections already, this is just hooking another source of traffic information into the system without having to dig open concrete or asphalt.

BrenBarn 1y ago

I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.

lmz 1y ago
If Google Maps had broadcast your individual(!) position and navigation intent to the local government people would scream about privacy. I'm not sure it's better when a local app does it.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  I think I'd be more comfortable sharing my location with the Belgian government than with Google.
CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
It hardly seems like the Flemish government are going to create an app that's a serious competitor to Google Maps etc. Even just reaching something reasonably functional for driving directions would be an awful lot of work.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  There are some good open-source apps for driving directions. The big problem with those apps is often the lack of a source for live traffic information, but the government probably has something for that already, so hooking that up into an open-source app should be quite effective. Shouldn't be too hard to advertise an app if it means you see more green lights on your journey.

Stevvo 1y ago

"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.

holowoodman 1y ago
I guess they just want to collect movements of all their citizens, and this is their way to get at the data.
jeroenhd 1y ago
Belgium has intelligent traffic lights already. You can't use an app system like this without existing smart traffic light infrastructure. This just allows for better traffic flow management by predicting influxes of traffic along long roads. But, more importantly, it allows traffic planners to analyze popular sources/destinations on the road map. If 90% of cars turn left at a certain traffic light but only because the traffic light before it takes forever to turn green, they can tweak the scheduling to divide traffic more evenly. The obvious downside, of course, is that this data will quickly show individuals when analyzing patterns in remote areas.
LtdJorge 1y ago
Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Install my app to turn on the lights, install the app to see the menu at a restaurant, install the app to read information about an archaeological site, install an app to open the automatic doors. As you said, it's 100% the wrong approach.
- create-username 1y ago
  You will soon be unable to cross the intersection unless you manually turn the light green from your mobile phone or wait until another authorised driver does it, in order to protect the children
- tzs 1y ago
  > Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Except that's not what they want here. What they want is for the apps that most people already use to add support for this.

dalben 1y ago

Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.

scoopertrooper 1y ago
What are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?
- __alexs 1y ago
  At least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.
- dalben 1y ago
  The concern was related to being able to know where emergency vehicles were. If you build a system that announces to traffic light “I’m police/fire/EMS, coming through”, you also build an early warning system for criminals and terrorists who either want to avoid or target you.
  - mosselman 1y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. How would criminals know even if the traffic light receives a signal like that?
    - ralferoo 1y ago
      I think these systems used RF before, so anything in the vicinity could listen in. That said, if this new system is a phone app, it'll just be using phone data instead, so it'd be hard for that to be intercepted.

holowoodman 1y ago

This is solving the wrong problem. If a traffic light can turn green at a whim, for any arriving app user, the intersection is not busy enough to have a traffic light. Then the traffic light should be removed or switched off for those times, instead of getting a very expensive (I presume) upgrade. If the intersection is busy enough so that people are waiting on all (or most) stop lines, then simpler traffic density sensors are a better, less invasive, far cheaper, and more privacy-preserving option.

antonvs 1y ago
> simpler traffic density sensors …which in practice tend to be more expensive to implement and maintain. Systems like this one can work because they take advantage of highly available commodity infrastructure.
- holowoodman 1y ago
  In the most cases, you should imho skip the traffic lights all together and use a roundabout. Automatically balancing, can work to large capacities (not as large as traffic lights, but visit France if you need to see how much traffic they can handle). No fragile electronics, no power consumption, less maintenance, less accident-prone (really!).
  - ztetranz 1y ago
    Yes roundabouts generally work well despite the fact that many American drivers seem to have problems with them. There are some traffic patterns where roundabouts don't do well. I've seen the following. Imagine a four way roundabout with north, east, south and west. Predominate rush hour traffic is towards the east. Heavy traffic entering from north. More entering from west. Most exiting at east with very little going around beyond west. Entering from south can be nearly impossible since they're waiting for a break from both north and west.
rafram 1y ago
Yeah, the US approach where low-volume traffic lights turn to flashing red (treated like a stop sign) late at night seems to work fine.

zspitzer 1y ago

In Melbourne, Australia, a long time ago, they embedded weight sensors in the road for a lot of intersections, so they can react dynamically to traffic conditions. I live in Berlin, which doesn't have such sensors and it's always frustrating waiting for lights to change when there's no traffic.

jeroenhd 1y ago
Are you sure they're using weight sensors? AFAIK wire loops seem much more useful, plus they have the advantage of also picking up bikes and other lightweight traffic more accurately. I can also tell you that even in a country with sensors all over the place, I do sometimes end up waiting on an intersection with no traffic. I assume it's some kind of public transportation/emergency vehicle priority system activating, or maybe it's an attempt to calm traffic downstream where loads of traffic has piled up already so intersections don't get blocked. Either way, adding sensors doesn't necessarily make traffic lights immune to unnecessary waiting times.
- CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
  From what I've heard, they don't always use the sensors; sometimes they're on a fixed schedule during the day and on request only overnight. Or they might be a fixed schedule always; a classmate at uni did a project around modelling traffic flow and found an intersection or two that turned out to be configured differently from how the council expected; probably a setting that was changed once and never revisited.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    I've seen this happen as well, but on different time slots. I think some of it is intentional (the algorithm designed to regulate busy intersections across an entire main road probably doesn't work well when there are only a few people on the road). The ones that operate on a timer all day every day seem to be bugged out, though.
- nosrepa 1y ago
  No traffic light uses weight sensors.

jeroenhd 1y ago

I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFIC_LIGHT&roadRegulatorId=&language=en https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI... I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong. Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.

miggol 1y ago
Thanks for sharing that link. The categories suggest that this system is mainly used to give priority to certain kinds of vehicles. Public transport and emergency vehicles already had a system to turn lights green, so this seems like an addition to extend the system to "milder" priority vehicles like construction without giving them access to the previous system. The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists. As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections. The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  > The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists. It depends on the city, but unless you're on the highway or about to enter one, a traffic light here can be assumed to serve bikes. I found that link a few years ago thanks to an app I used when I went to university: https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-groen/ https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-gr... The municipality has an app that will integrate with the iVRI system to have traffic lights turn green faster for bikes. It doesn't do anything for cars, it's built purely to try to convince more people not to travel by car. Of course, iVRI data providing information about incoming bicycles don't automatically reprogram traffic lights to give them priority. However, the information is available. I've had the Enschede app trigger a "this app requested X green lights during your ride" popup in other cities; I'm pretty sure it's just an iVRI integration, not one restricted by a specific municipality.

OtherShrezzing 1y ago

I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.

yehoshuapw 1y ago
I actually assumed that this is because the system tries to figure out where you will be by your planned route. so seeing the bike coming up is much later - for example when the bike will be coming around a corner
dalben 1y ago
That's not how it works - the idea is your navigation app signals the lights in advance. If you will reach red lights in 1km, the app signals this and the lights will be green before you're there, so you don't need to slow down.
- arp242 1y ago
  Most people do not use a navigation app for most trips (i.e. commuting to work, grocery shopping, or whatnot).
nanna 1y ago
> Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic. The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything. Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic." > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1y ago

karpour 1y ago

In Eindhoven, NL, there is a similar system without app. At night traffic lights are red by default, if sensors in the pavement detect an approaching car they turn green in time. If there are no other cars you never have to stop. Great system and has been there for a decade at least.

NovemberWhiskey 1y ago

Isn’t this what Car2X was supposed to do?

Havoc 1y ago

Surprised by the negativity here. This sort of predictive/automated traffic is a pretty clear win without a corresponding downside. Worst case scenario for all drivers is more or less same as dumb lights with fair bit of time saving potential

iLoveOncall 1y ago

250 intersections covered is nothing at all, I'm absolutely not surprised that private companies don't want to dedicate resources to interfacing with such a minuscule system.

PeterStuer 1y ago

Just in case you wonder, these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ https://be-mobile.com/ . They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.

mosselman 1y ago
That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy. When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license. Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone... In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.
de_huit 1y ago
Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...

password4321 1y ago

I am waiting for the day when every red light is a micro-auction to stop cross traffic sooner.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

I went into the article assuming we were talking about the (illegal) Mobile Infrared Transmitters (MIRTs?) that were something like the phreaker "boxes" (somehow I thought they were called "Chrome boxes" but I can't find a reference now). (I'm pretty sure the U.S. emergency vehicles still have those — for which of course they are legal.)

kuon 1y ago

Here (switzerland) lights turn red on purpose to slow down traffic. The idea is that if you see a green light in the distance, you are motivated to speed up to catch it before it turns red. If it is red in the distance, you slow down because you eventually have to stop, and when you are like 20m from it, detectors will see you and turn it green.

sschueller 1y ago
Aka Grünewelle (Green-wave)[1] if you drive the speed limit every light you reach will turn green. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave
- Noumenon72 1y ago
  Thanks for explaining, because the OP made it sound like the red light tricked you into wastefully shedding speed instead of letting you stay at the speed limit. Their language makes it sound like they view slowing traffic as intrinsically good, rather than just trying to prevent speeding.
  - kuon 1y ago
    I should have been clearer on two behaviors. What I describe is if you are "alone". Green light often (not everywhere) don't stay green if there is no car. But if there is traffic, it is made in such a way that when you get a green somewhere, you can expect every subsequent intersection to turn green when the head of the traffic arrives. So the first vehicle will see a red light turn green as they approach, and the ideal timing is around the speed limit. Further cars will have a green light, but with no intensive to speed as they are sandwiched between cars. Also I should say that this is empirical evidence based on about 20 intersections I pass often. I don't know how much of a rule it is country wise as I don't pay attention to that when I go places I don't routinely go.
rob74 1y ago
My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them. See also: people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane...

gadders 1y ago

Just installing this in my car so I always get a green light: https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traffic-jam/ https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff...

rob74 1y ago

> A simple example: at night, a main road mainly displays green, the side streets only get green for a very short time. If you arrive with the app from a side street, you can get green immediately, provided there is no traffic on the main road. In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.

phkahler 1y ago
I don't understand why they need apps for this either. The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.
- bluecalm 1y ago
  We have those in Poland. Sucks if you are on a bike. You need to wait for a car to turn it green for you.
  - 6510 1y ago
    In the Netherlands we have ones that detect warm bodies.
    - hobofan 1y ago
      Sucks if you are a zombie...
      - vrosas 1y ago
        Here in Zombieland we have cameras that can detect any bipedal movement.

kazinator 1y ago

Would this green light app be something that you would be fiddling with while driving, as you're approaching the target intersection?

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

As far as emergency vehicles go, we have had a system in place, around here, for years, where the vehicles have some kind of infrared device that forces the light green. Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn. I think there's also a black market for the devices for impatient drivers.

Ylpertnodi 1y ago
>Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn. My local (EU) ER/ A+E hospital flashes up messages like "child emergency...all doctors called", "car accident, patient due in", "stroke victim, just admitted", and everyone just goes "ahhhh, fuck", and waits longer. I'd love to know the significant time lost, as a percentage of your life, with regards to the amount of time an ambulance could possibly delay you.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Not a big deal at all. Maybe 30 seconds at a time. Whenever I hear sirens, I always think "Someone is having a worse day than I am." Around here, we are pretty solicitous of emergency vehicles. We pull over, or don't enter an intersection, if we hear sirens. Every now and then, some inflamed hemorrhoid cuts off the fire truck, but it's rare.

6510 1y ago

I've been pondering this since the 90's. In my imagination the ultimate form is to have an auction with auto-bidding and minimum bids. If you haven't money you configure the app to collect only with a low minimum bid. When wealthy you have everyone wait for you. For example: From one direction 20 cars are approaching the crossing. Only 1 from the other direction. From the 20 car direction the highest minimum bid is 5 euro. For the single car to get priority they would have to pay 100 euro. The money goes in the other drivers account. Manual control is also possible. The wait time is displayed on the dash along with the fee. If the fee is below the configured maximum you can press a green button, if there are no higher auto-bids the light will turn green. If there are the fee increases for you to press the button again. It would finally provide a fun game for people with high testosterone issues so that they can assert their dominance by handing out free money. That you own a fancy car doesn't mean you get to go first, I have more money than you therefore you should wait while watching me cross the crossing. The old lady behind the Bentley also gets 500 euro in her account.

lolc 1y ago
Pay people to wait at intersections. What could go wrong?

whartung 1y ago

Late at night, at a friends house, and his car died, but I need a ride to my car. So, we took his motorcycle. We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way. Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat. Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back. This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red. Curses. We just ran that one.

dpe82 1y ago
In Wisconsin, motorcycles, bikes, etc. are sometimes allowed to run a red if they wait for 45s and there's no other traffic around: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/vi/37/1/c/4 https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/vi/37...
diggan 1y ago
> So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button [...] the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way. You mean the button for pedestrians to pass the crosswalk I guess? Why would it say "WALK" (be green for pedestrians?) and also be green for a vehicle to pass? The crosswalks around me are the reverse, if pedestrians can pass, no vehicles can pass, and vice-versa. Or maybe I misunderstood something?
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
  Perestrians going in the same direction as traffic will generally get a walk signal when the traffic gets a green light.

byyll 1y ago

Lmao, an app.

elric 1y ago

I wish we would install beg buttons for drivers instead. Pedestrians keep drawing the short end of the stick in Flanders.

pftburger 1y ago

Title should read : Flemish tragic agency grumpy that google wont stream all drivers position to them in real-time.

imzadi 1y ago

This article is just the same three sentences written in four different ways.

jovial_cavalier 1y ago

Why does this need to be an app at all? Wouldn't it be simpler and more accurate to just use computer vision or other sensors? Isn't this just a cartoonishly obvious ploy to get you to install some malware on your phone that tracks where you go and when?

lofaszvanitt 1y ago

But for now, those talks have not yielded any results, so you have to turn to the smaller apps. --- THAT'S WHY YOU PATENT YOUR TECHNOLOGY!

lofaszvanitt 1y ago

Very good idea.

paxys 1y ago

So...let's give control of traffic lights to private corporations. Surely they won't figure out how to game it for profit, right?

smeej 1y ago

With all the data companies certainly have about traffic flow, it boggles my mind that there isn't a company out there selling city-wide "traffic light optimization" where they come in, analyze the data, and set the traffic lights to optimize traffic flow. Heck, sell it as a subscription where the analysis continues running and factors in things like major events or road closures automatically. Noise and air pollution would go down. Time waiting in traffic would go down. Crashes would go down. Of all the things that have been optimized in the worod today by algorithmic analysis of data, it just surprises me that this hasn't been one of them.

exiguus 1y ago

In amsterdam there are traffic light systems that prioritize their green phases and rhythms according to the number of traffic participants. For example, streetcars have priority 1, then buses, bicycles and finally cars. This works via weight or pressure sensors. No camera or app.

aaron695 1y ago

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metalman 1y ago

these traffic apps would have a lot more uptake if the options included labeling and graphics like used in classic games ......" The spell of passage", and for observing varios trafic laws , earn points and free tolls for bridges and hyways or other ways to pay for permiting and licensing