Sometimes a traffic light that you know very well seems to have a Windows
moment and will inexplicably remain on red for ages. If you are in a one-way
road and a traffic light breaks down showing red, you can't back out out of
it and so would have to go through it eventually. Does the law say anything
about how long a traffic light has to stay on red before you are allowed to
go through it? Or are you legally required to sit there for days with the
cars behind beeping at you until an engineer fixes it?

I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late at
night. Long phases at busy junctions during rush hour increase capacity by
removing the dead time when nothing is moving, but long phases late at night
are pointless. There are some traffic lights in Harrow town centre which
remain red for up to four minutes late at night, while approximately one
vehicle per minute passes in the other direction. Is this design or
incompetence? Maybe it is supposed to deter vehicles from going through
Harrow centre - but it also delays buses, and increases taxi fares by two
pounds.

The traffic lights at Cricklewood Lane / Claremont Road are a particular
conundrum, because they only allow about 4 vehicles to emerge from busy
Cricklewood Lane before quiet Claremont Road has a full minute of green
phase. This has the effect of punishing traffic which sticks to the main
Cricklewood Lane, and rewarding traffic which rat-runs down The Vale and
Claremont Road or Minster Road and Lichfield Road.

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning "you can
go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go if no cars are
crossing"? This could then be used on numerous traffic lights late at night.
It would also improve safety on roundabouts which currently have the traffic
lights switched off outside the peak - at the moment there is no way of
telling whether the traffic light is switched off or the red bulb is blown.

Why has Britain never copied the Japanese idea of having a digital countdown
above traffic lights? Surely it would increase capacity, and also give
drivers free time to have drinks or change CDs instead of staring at the red
light.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:00:02 +0100, "John Rowland"
wrote:

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning "you can
go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go if no cars are
crossing"?

Bah, what we need is the traffic light systems used on some busy roads
in Thailand.

When the light is green a clock counts down showing when they're going
to go red, when the light is red it counts down until the lights turn
green.

A fantastic noise is heard for the ten seconds before they turn green

--
- GamerTag: Hayn - icq: 9235201 -- Hayn on dal.net -
http://www.sendit.com/scp/id/what - Want DVDs/Games?

John Rowland wrote:
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late at
night.

I've seen a lot of tempary ones that work fine during the day but oddly
seem to get fixed to red at night when the workers have gone home. I'd
suspect they can be setup by the workers with whatever delay is
required and kids sometimes can get in and fiddle with em.

There was one near me that was red from friday night to midday sunday
before the police noticed/were informed and turned it off.

Fod

"John Rowland" wrote in message
...

SNIP
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late at
night. Long phases at busy junctions during rush hour increase capacity by
removing the dead time when nothing is moving, but long phases late at
night
are pointless. There are some traffic lights in Harrow town centre which
remain red for up to four minutes late at night, while approximately one
vehicle per minute passes in the other direction. Is this design or
incompetence? Maybe it is supposed to deter vehicles from going through
Harrow centre - but it also delays buses, and increases taxi fares by two
pounds.

SNIP

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning "you
can
go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go if no cars are
crossing"? This could then be used on numerous traffic lights late at
night.
It would also improve safety on roundabouts which currently have the
traffic
lights switched off outside the peak - at the moment there is no way of
telling whether the traffic light is switched off or the red bulb is
blown.

Why has Britain never copied the Japanese idea of having a digital
countdown
above traffic lights? Surely it would increase capacity, and also give
drivers free time to have drinks or change CDs instead of staring at the
red
light.

--
John Rowland

Oh how I agree with you !!!! Nothing more annoying than being stopped for
several minutes in the early hours of the morning by a red light when you
can see quite clearly that there isn't another vehicle on the road for
miles.
Cheerz,
Baz

Marratxi wrote in
:

"John Rowland" wrote in
message ...

SNIP
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late
at night. Long phases at busy junctions during rush hour increase
capacity by removing the dead time when nothing is moving, but long
phases late at night are pointless. There are some traffic lights in
Harrow town centre which remain red for up to four minutes late at
night, while approximately one vehicle per minute passes in the
other direction. Is this design or incompetence? Maybe it is
supposed to deter vehicles from going through Harrow centre - but it
also delays buses, and increases taxi fares by two pounds.

SNIP

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning
"you can go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go
if no cars are crossing"? This could then be used on numerous
traffic lights late at night. It would also improve safety on
roundabouts which currently have the traffic lights switched off
outside the peak - at the moment there is no way of telling whether
the traffic light is switched off or the red bulb is blown.

Why has Britain never copied the Japanese idea of having a digital
countdown above traffic lights? Surely it would increase capacity,
and also give drivers free time to have drinks or change CDs instead
of staring at the red light.

Oh how I agree with you !!!! Nothing more annoying than being stopped
for several minutes in the early hours of the morning by a red light
when you can see quite clearly that there isn't another vehicle on
the road for miles.

This happened to me: I took a wrong turning down a dead end late at night
and then found that the traffic lights to let me out at the junction had
stuck on red. After waiting about five minutes with no other cars coming, I
decided to apply a bit of common sense. I crawled forwards, flashing my
headlights - it was after 11 PM so sounding my horn would have been illegal!
And bugger me a police car came along just as I got to the other side of the
junction. With much wailing of sirens (a brief flash of his blue lights
would have sufficed!) he signalled me to stop - which I was already
preparing to do anyway. In the standard patronising tone which treats people
as if they have a mental age of five, he started to say that he had "reason
to believe" that I'd just gone through a red light. "Yes," I said. "It's
been stuck on red for five minutes with no cars coming and it's a dead end."
He didn't believe me, so I suggested he might like to drive down there and
try to get out again without going through a red light. And he did! With his
mate keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn't bugger off, he actually
drove down there, turned round and realised that he couldn't get out again.
Eventually he put on his blues and twos to give him an excuse to go through
the light. "Well you *did* warn me!" he confessed, finally seeing the funny
side of it.

When I asked him how long one should wait at a red light before assuming
it's got stuck, he said he didn't know - but five minutes, late at night
when there's nothing coming, was probably long enough - it seems I'd done
the right thing.

Marratxi wrote:


Oh how I agree with you !!!! Nothing more annoying than being stopped for
several minutes in the early hours of the morning by a red light when you
can see quite clearly that there isn't another vehicle on the road for
miles.
Cheerz,
Baz
Or especially at 2 in morning when the side road only goes into a
supermarket.

Kevin

"Fod" wrote in message
ups.com...

John Rowland wrote:
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights have long phases late at
night.

I've seen a lot of tempary ones that work fine during the day but oddly
seem to get fixed to red at night when the workers have gone home. I'd
suspect they can be setup by the workers with whatever delay is
required and kids sometimes can get in and fiddle with em.

There was one near me that was red from friday night to midday sunday
before the police noticed/were informed and turned it off.

If I can see to the other side of those temp ones (often they are for all of
about 10 metres) I'll go through them anyway (if its clear) same as
overtaking a parked bus really! Bloody things...

"JamesB" wrote in message
...

John Rowland wrote:
I have noticed that a number of traffic lights
have long phases late at night.

If I can see to the other side of those temp ones
(often they are for all of about 10 metres)
I'll go through them anyway (if its clear) same as
overtaking a parked bus really! Bloody things...

When road works reduced my (straight) road to one lane, they put temporary
lights on it for a week, even though my road is habitually reduced to one
lane by parked cars anway.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, John Rowland wrote:

Why doesn't Britain extend the "flashing amber" signal from meaning "you
can go if no pedestrians are crossing" to also mean "you can go if no
cars are crossing"?

Good idea.

I'm not entirely sure about using flashing amber, though: rightly or
wrongly, people associate amber with 'go' - and, indeed, 'go, quick!' -
which is not what you want to say here. Also, the main failure modes (in
driving rain, with your windscreen wipers thrashing about, and people's
umbrellas zipping through your line of sight) are going to be only seeing
the lit phases - and so mistaking it for a 'go' sign - or only seeing the
unlit phases, and so not seeing it at all!

I was thinking about this a while ago, and i thought that the best thing
might be to use shape - build red lights with two elements, an inverted
triangle and a circle enclosing it, like an upside-down version of this:

http://www.analyzemath.com/Geometry/...cumcircle2.gif

When you mean 'stop', light both bits; when you mean 'probably stop, but
go if nobody's coming', you light the triangle. The idea here is that the
probably-stop light looks like an illuminated version of the existing
'give way' sign, which will hopefully trigger the right behaviour in
drivers who see it. And, since it's solid red, the main failure mode is
going to be to mistake it for a circular red, which is fine - it's always
safe to stop at a probably-stop. The downside, of course, is that you need
to build entirely new, and more complex, lights.

If you want to use existing lights, then i'd say you need something which
includes a solid red: that means 'stop', giving fail-safe behaviour if a
driver misses the other element. Ideally, you'd then have another element
which doesn't mean 'go' on its own, to give fail-safety if the driver
doesn't see the red. The trouble is, there isn't anything like that - all
forms of green mean 'go' and, despite what the highway code says, so do
all forms of yellow. Perhaps a solid red + briefly flashing green would
do; the quick pulses of green wouldn't be enough to let anyone think it
was a solid green, but would be seen by a driver who was stopped at the
light.

All that said, isn't the real solution to make the lights (or rather, the
junction) sensor-controlled, or perhaps better-sensor-controlled? If the
junction knew there was a queue of cars waiting to go one way, and cars
were only a few a minute the other way, it could just change its lights to
let them through.

This could then be used on numerous traffic lights late at night.

Or at any time and place where this pattern of traffic occurs. Mostly at
night, granted.

Why has Britain never copied the Japanese idea of having a digital
countdown above traffic lights? Surely it would increase capacity, and
also give drivers free time to have drinks or change CDs instead of
staring at the red light.

Maybe there's a worry that if people know they can go in 1 second, they'll
go right now, since it's bound to be safe, isn't it ...

tom

--
If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence
of heightened sensibility -- Peter Medawar

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:01:58 +0100, "Marratxi"
wrote:


Oh how I agree with you !!!! Nothing more annoying than being stopped for
several minutes in the early hours of the morning by a red light when you
can see quite clearly that there isn't another vehicle on the road for
miles.

Yes there is. That police car, just round the corner :-)

They won't nick you for creeping through a light that's been read for
several minutes. But you'd better have a fully legal vehicle, and not
have had a drink :-)