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Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_Protocol Its NOT about controlling traffic
by ape4 1y ago
Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_Protocol
Its NOT about controlling traffic lights.
Some are networked ("synchronized") so it might be interesting to read about how that's done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_control_and_coordination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_control_and_coor...
- hexomancer 1y agoYeah I got exited thinking this is about traffic lights. I use a bike to commute to work and recently I was thinking if I could adjust my cycling cadence so that I never hit a red light, but unfortunately the timing of the traffic lights in my city is not constant. If there was a publicly accessible API to get the current timing info, I could write an app to do that.
- helterskelter 1y agoIf you're in America, take a look at the strobe on top of school busses. I'm not sure if they still have them (they used to). It would flash at a specific frequency and trip a photovoltaic sensor connected to the traffic light, which would turn it green so the kids aren't late for class. If you had a bright enough strobe which flashed at the same frequency...you get the idea.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoIs that actually true? I've heard of ambulances & police cars having such devices, but they were supposed to be infrared. The last time I saw the strobe on top of a school bus active, it was when I was a passenger in one, driving down the freeway at night, and it wasn't strobing particularly fast. It's possible that our driver just forgot to turn it off, I suppose - he was that kind of guy.
- jagged-chisel 1y agoSchool buses in my state are legally required to run the strobe when passengers are onboard. No two strobes I have seen strobe at the same frequency. I think this traffic control story is urban legend.
- jagged-chisel 1y agoEmergency vehicles have devices that announce their presence to get traffic lights to change in their favor. “Kids being late to class” is not on the order of importance to create a complex scheme to change traffic lights based on strobe lights from a bus. Sounds like urban legend.
- Yeroc 1y agoWe definitely have this system in place in some cities in Canada, primarily for express bus routes.
- dylan604 1y agoSo as a driver, you want to follow an express route bus when you can?
- toast0 1y agoBus priority lanes and traffic lights that give priority to busses are definitely a thing. Usually for municipal busses and not school busses, but I'd expect a community that had priority lights for busses would allow school busses onto the system as well. Not specifically to avoid late arrivals of pupils, but because prioritizing many passenger vehicles is valuable.
- dylan604 1y agoI never heard about this being used on school busses. This was always something for emergency services like firetrucks/ambulances to not have to sit in traffic at a red light, but it was only active if they were actively responding to a call with their lights on. Otherwise, they sit at the lights too.
- euroderf 1y agoA newspaper article told of a mayor of some city that had one installed so he could zip along to emergencies.
- gwbas1c 1y agoThat wikipedia article makes a whole lot more sense defining what the traffic light protocol is. At first I thought this was some kind of tech protocol that's implemented by a computer. Now I realized it's an informal protocol.