'Green'(LED) Traffic Lights Blamed For Fatal Accidents

[RamboLiberal]

Source: KDKA TV/AP

MILWAUKEE (AP) ― Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don't burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.

"I've never had to put up with this in the past," said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn't see the lights. "The police officer told me the new lights weren't melting the snow. How is that safe?"

Many communities have switched to LED bulbs in their traffic lights because they use 90 percent less energy than the old incandescent variety, last far longer and save money. Their great advantage is also their drawback: They do not waste energy by producing heat.

Authorities in several states are testing possible solutions, including installing weather shields, adding heating elements like those used in airport runway lights, or coating the lights with water-repellent substances.


Read more: http://kdka.com/technology/energy.efficient.traffic.2.1373474.html

[Butch350]

1. Don't ya eyes work any more.

traffic signals don't control your brains nor your eyes.

[bejamin wood]

4. I agree

I believe some think they have the right of way by default and obviously cannot fill the gaps when the situation changes, especially when you make a comment like "I've never had to put up with this in the past".

Argh!

[ArcticFox]

11. But even if it's treated as a 4-way stop, savings go "poof"

What about all the time of all those people who now have to wait extra long to go through the intersection? That costs something, whether it's considered by city planners or not. Now people have to spend more time on the road, their cars idle longer, adding pollution and consumption of fuel, and pissing everyone off.

Also, I'm from the midwest. I know from experience that when it's snowing you often can't even know an intersection is there without seeing either a stop sign or a traffic signal. If these signals are obscured, it is certainly unsafe.

[bejamin wood]

15. Yeah, but some manage without explicit direction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

:wow: Ok, that's a bad example...

[ArcticFox]

18. Just add ice

And things could get very interesting.

[KansDem]

35. Check this one out!

If everyone could drive like this, there'd be no need for traffic lights! Or brakes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzUKlJPrRyM
:rofl:

[merwin]

23. Try explaining how to handle a 4 way stop in an intersection with 6 lanes each way.

Which one of the 24 cars has right of way again? I know that where I live, which isn't that large of a city, everything goes to hell when the power goes out. And there's no laws on the books that I have found to direct what is supposed to happen other than "the vehicle on the right goes next".

I end up usually getting frustrated at everyone else hesitating and people randomly trying to "shoot the gap" that I just find someone in a lane next to me who blocks the majority of traffic to one side of me and go when they do. Safety in numbers and all.

My theory is that it should change from "vehicle to the right has the right of way" to "set of lanes to the right has the right of way" in a power outage situation for a 4+ lane road. So, everyone in all of the lanes going a single direction all go at once, then the next set to the right, etc. But that would take actual coordination and logic and stuff.

After reading through the laws in WA regarding road rules to figure out of there were any defined laws for the massive amount roundabouts that are being built in our county and finding nothing regarding right of way, I tend to wing it going through those based on what I think the other motorist is going to do... specifically in the case of the person on the inside lane taking a right turn across the outside lane. According to the signage the only time you have to yield is when you're entering. Once you're in, there's conflicting signage for exiting and who yields.

Of course, I can't complain since it was my father who was responsible for the roundabout trend around here several years ago. When having it built at the college he jokingly said the sculpture in the middle should be of piled up cars.

[ArcticFox]

32. Roundabouts suck

At least the way they do them here in California. They're much too small and everything happens much too quickly. You've got to look right and left and try to read signs and figure out which exit to take and make sure you don't rear-end or side-swipe somebody while you or they are entering.

I've been on a few in Europe that were on the order of 300 yards diameter (in California, I'd say they are about 30), which makes it a different story, more like a freeway off-ramp.

[merwin]

34. They just built a couple huge ones in my town on major roads.

Not quite 300 yards, but not the small ones you see either. These are on 50mph roads, so they're big enough to take at about 35mph. Makes things a little easier because you have more prep and reaction time. Half of the problem in the states is that there's no clear definition of law on how to proceed on a roundabout in many states because each city/county implements them differently.

[ManiacJoe]

40. Roundabouts are easy:

The cars entering must yield to the cars already inside and to cars leaving.

Your description of the "set of lanes to the right has the right of way" is usually the correct interpretation of "car to the right has the right of way." The problem is that most drivers do not remember how all-way stops are supposed to work.

[Ian David]

41. Here's what happens when an intersection goes wrong...

The most dangerous traffic light in th world ( Russia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2JFL1Sk21Y&NR=1

[Tesha]

62. And the old incandescent lamps *NEVER* burned out! (NT)

[notadmblnd]

2. why not just use the old type bulb in the winter

when the heat is needed?

[kentauros]

3. Look at a city map sometime and notice

just how many intersections there are. Even if only a tenth of them have traffic signals, they will have at a minimum a dozen light-bulbs (three facing each direction of traffic.) That's far too many to switch out every winter. Better to install some kind of heating element like has been suggested :)

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

7. Yes.

It's only a seasonal and regional problem. The savings is quite significant. Retro-fitting the lights with a simple heating element (similar to a bird bath heater) would still be cheaper than the old technoplogy.

[Romulox]

10. It's doubtful that incandescent lights would work in the LED fixtures, anyhow. nt

[AngryAmish]

28. Won't work - need an incandescent ballast

You can put a CFL in an incandescent fixture because there is an wee little fluorescent ballast in each of them. Have to get an incandescent ballast in a LED fixture -which is not possible., I think. I'm not an electrical engineer, just a boozed up half wit.

[truthisfreedom]

37. There's no ballast on an incandescent bulb... incandescent just means tungsten, a standard bulb.

Ballasts are for fluorescents.

[TommyO]

5. People are forgetting that if there's a traffic light and it's broken (or you can't see the lights)

are supposed to be treated as a four-way stop.

[merwin]

24. Or a 24 way stop if you've got 6 lanes going each direction.

Fairly common with one left turn lane and two going forward in each direction. The laws are very clear usually that the vehicle to the right has right of way in a 4 way stop. What about when you've got 24 drivers in an unfamiliar situation anxious about getting hit by oncoming traffic and all thinking something different.

Recipe for disaster, or at least a clusterfuck of hundreds of non-moving vehicles all anxious to go whenever they see an opening.

In reality, there needs to be clearly defined laws regarding what to do in a "large scale" 4 way stop, like having an entire set of lanes go at once and treating multiple cars as a single entity, thus allowing the whole "4 way stop" rule to apply again... but as I said in an earlier post, that requires coordination between drivers and it's something that's not usually practiced (or even taught) unless you live in an area where this happens frequently.

Winter makes things all that much worse because of visibility issues, vehicle issues, etc... Like, what happens when the person who is supposed to go doesn't because his tires are spinning. Either the guy to the right of the spinning car will go or some opportunistic asshole will power his way through when it's not his turn simply because nobody else is going.

Real life is a lot more chaotic than a textbook. Ask any motorcycle rider who's been in an accident that involved another vehicle which driver was at fault. I can guarantee that 90+ percent of them were due to another driver not paying full attention to the road or surroundings and either directly hitting the motorcycle or panicking and doing something really stupid causing the motorcycle to crash. In my case, it was the latter. When the driver pulled out and eventually saw me, she stopped in the middle of my lane on a very rainy day about 30 feet in front of me. Absolute worst thing the driver could have possibly done, causing me to ditch the bike and go flying into her car. If she had just kept going I could have squeaked past the ass end of her huge SUV and been fine. Before that point, I always expected as a rider that everyone else on the road will do the stupidest thing imaginable. It's how you stay alive. After that, I now have to imagine that they're going to take it one step further.

What I'm trying to say is that no matter what you put in a book, it's all useless unless it's practiced. And stop lights don't go out enough in most places for people to get the practice adapting to the situation they're placed in.

In my history I crashed several cars, some my fault, some other people's fault over the first 5 years or so of driving, then got a motorcycle as my primary mode of transportation and suddenly no more accidents (aside from the one 7 years ago). Being in a situation where your awareness of your surroundings has to be at 100% or you can die makes you develop better driving habits overall. After well over 10 years with a motorcycle as a primary vehicle I can pretty much predict what any vehicle is going to do by what I see on their face, which direction their tires are pointing if they're stopped, where they stopped, if they're going to change lanes (most drivers can't look in a direction without moving in that direction, so you can tell much of the time what they're going to do several seconds ahead of the lane change). All that and keeping a mental head count on where every car around you is at all times in case one of them decides to make a course change without checking to see if anyone is next to them.

My theory is that cars provide a sense of security that is great enough that people do not feel the need to pay close enough attention. If you question that, look at how someone in an SUV drives compared to someone in a tiny little sports car. While the guy in the sports car usually is acting less responsibly in terms of following road rules, the one in the SUV is far more dangerous because of some inherent lack of attention. Probably because if they get in an accident they'll be fine and the insurance will pay for it. The guy in the little sports car, while being obnoxious, usually is the less dangerous person on the road. And the motorcycle riders who are the worst offenders in terms of road rule violations much of the time are also usually paying the most attention to the road and their surroundings, because one slip up and they're dead.

[ArcticFox]

6. Savings, what savings?

I'd bet you wipe out ten years of savings with a single accident. Think about it: the municipality is certainly going to be sued for creating a dangerous condition. Damage to a vehicle alone probably wipes out a year of savings. This is simply making some poor soul pay for a municipality's "savings".

Doesn't anybody think these things through?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

8. City of Portland saves $350,000 on LED lights.

State of Wisconsin (per the article) saves $750,000 per year. And per the article, you can no more sue the city over this than you can sue because a power outage caused the lights to fail. In such instances, you are to treat the intersection as a four-way stop.

[Romulox]

12. Cost of *one* traffic fatality?

:hi:

[ArcticFox]

17. Journalists are not lawyers

I could think of many situations where a person would prevail against the municipality. Even disregarding the viability of a legal action, this could kill people. That's just municipalities externalizing their costs.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

21. Neither are people who post in online forums....

I looked at the "Rules of the Road" for several states, and they all confirm that a non-functioning traffic signal should be treated as a four-way stop. If you choose to drive through a four-way stop without even slowing down (much less stopping, as is required by law), you can be issued a moving violation and YOU would be at fault in the event of a collision.

[merwin]

25. As I've said before in this thread, everything gets thrown out the window

when you throw in multiple lanes for each direction, like 6 lanes each way (1 turn, two forward in each direction).

Look up the rules of the road for that situation, betcha can't find it in most states. 4 way stops are not meant to handle 24 lanes of traffic gracefully... EVER. It's less a matter of not stopping than who goes next. The majority of the people realize that the light is out and they need to stop, but get overwhelmed by the crisscrossing and randomness that naturally occurs with that many lanes.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

27. Absolutely...

There's a massive difference between what you describe and a simple four-way traffic signal. And these lights should be fitted with warmers (or be maintained as traditional lights).

[ArcticFox]

31. Some of us are.

You obviously are not. The "rules of the road" are not the basis of jury instructions on dangerous condition or negligent design.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

53. Some of you, in particular, aren't...

You can't sue a municipality because you chose to disregard traffic regulations. A malfunctioning stop light is treated as a four-way stop. You choose to ignore that, then you're being negligent.

The fact is that if you hit another vehicle, they would be suing you.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

56. You are kind of on the right track in that the plaintiff will be the "other" driver.

What you fail to recognize is the theory of "proximate cause" and (joint) liability related to proximate cause. In other words, IF NOT FOR THE MALFUNCTIONING LIGHT, the accident would not have happened.

The jury gets to weigh in on the primate cause aspect - they are not bound by "the rules of the road". In other words, it's possible for the municipality to create a condition that can LEAD another driver to break the law. The other driver's violation doesn't absolve the municipality their part of the liability for creating this foreseeable outcome. Malfunctioning signals are a known hazard and accidents are a known outcome of these hazards. The policeman in the OP article pretty much lays out a "if not for" case. Its not unreasonable to assume a malfunctioning light will lead to accidents.

Where it gets really dicey from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is the theory of "sovereign immunity" from theses claims. Sometimes the municipality is immune.

[ArcticFox]

57. Half right

Yes, if I hit another vehicle, they would be suing me. They would also sue the municipality.

Have you considered the circumstance where it is snowing so much that drivers cannot know they're entering a signalized intersection unless the light is shining from the signal?

If I could not have seen the malfunctioning signal, then my failure to stop was not in disregard of traffic regulations. I would not be at fault at all.

[dysfunctional press]

20. "Think about it: the municipality is certainly going to be sued for creating a dangerous condition."

no- YOU think about it.

when the lights are malfunctioning or out, the intersection is to be treated as a 4-way stop.
in this type of circumstance, the fault/responsibility lies with the drivers, not the city.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

29. At this point, they know they have an unreliable traffic signal.

This prior knowledge plus the driver's expectation of a working signal absent a situation BEYOND the municipality's control plus the "deep pockets" theory adds up for a potential hefty award in a civil suit.

Drivers have a reasonable expectation the municipality (and the signal maker) will maintain the roads and signals. It's the same theory that allows drivers to collect damages to their vehicles for substandard road maintenance. It happens all the time.

[ArcticFox]

30. The situations are not comparable.

Malfunctioning lights are not foreseeable. The situation set forth in the article is. And it is preventable. And now municipalities are on notice. There is liability. No doubt about it.

[caseymoz]

22. It will be straightened out within a few years . . .

. . . and then there will be savings.

[HopeHoops]

9. In the early 70's, Columbia, MD had horizontal traffic lights - great unless you're color blind!

There was no way to tell which side was green or red if they look the same to you. That caused enough accidents that they went back to traditional vertical lights. A lot more people are color blind than most people realize. The majority can't distinguish between green and red. Blue/yellow is far less common. I read an explanation for that many years ago but I've long since forgotten what it was.

[kentauros]

13. Even so

I can't think of any horizontal lights that go "green, yellow, red" from left to right. Every one I've ever seen goes in that sequence from right to left. Learn the sequence and you're fine :)

[HopeHoops]

14. Frankly, I don't remember which way they went - but Columbia did everything ass-backwards.

It was a so-called "planned community". Its sister city is Reston, VA and I'll be damned if you can tell which of the two you are in from any given spot. Rouse was the main developer and the objective was pretty much to rape the land and fill in every available square inch with houses. Boy did they fuck some things up. There was absolutely nothing for junior-high and high school students to do after school but get into trouble. They plopped down young trees 12" from the curb, two per house, and when the damn things got big and needed to be trimmed they wanted the county to pay for doing it. Overall, Reston is a bigger clusterfuck than Columbia. During rush hour, it can take an hour to go two miles on any of the north/south routes. All of the "back ways" are just as fucked up. Columbia has more work-around routes, but not many and you have to know the roads really well to use them.

If you've ever seen one of them from the sky, they look like a cancer of the Earth.

[Romulox]

36. That's completely illogical for people who read top to bottom, left to right...

Street lights are uniformly read top to bottom everywhere I've been, which is the traditional order that Western languages are read in.

So why in god's green acre would an out of towner be expected to know that a horizontal light would be read right to left, which is the opposite of most (every?) Western language?

[kentauros]

44. Illogical? How so?

It's simply how it's done everywhere that I've seen horizontal traffic lights. If that's not how they do it in your part of the US, then it's backwards to everywhere else ;)

Also, if foreigners are driving on our roads without some minute idea of how the traffic laws work, then they are a hazard already, whether they recognize the order of changing lights or not. It's pretty easy to observe such things as which light allows traffic through the intersection and which one stops it, and then learn that pretty quickly. So your argument against the "logic" of how the lights change is rather weak.

[Romulox]

58. Here's a tip: read the post before yours before responding. I explain *exactly* how so

"If that's not how they do it in your part of the US,"

I've been from coast to coast and never seen a horizontal traffic light. :hi:

[Endangered Specie]

45. Traffic lights aren't strictly one color

properly designed, the green has a slight bit of blue, and the reg has a slight bit of orange

[kentauros]

48. That makes sense.

I may have noticed that, too, like why the green is closer to teal in some cases...

[HopeHoops]

55. I grew up in Columbia and frankly I don't think ANYTHING was "properly designed".

This was also in the 70's, so I'm not sure if those tints had been incorporated yet.

[JonQ]

16. Green lights put in to reduce carbon emissions

and thus reduce global warming are leading to deaths because they get too cold and freeze over.

Kind of ironic.

Doesn't prove anything, just humorous to me.

[katkat]

19. If this is such a big problem

How is it that I've never seen this in my state where it routinely gets below zero in the winter?

And what kind of a moron sales through an intersection if they can't see the light? Oh, wait, someone on a cell phone.

[LanternWaste]

26. Most undoubtedly...

"Oh, wait, someone on a cell phone..."

Most undoubtedly. Most undoubtedly someone on a cell phone who believes their own talent for driving whilst talking on a cell excludes them from active concentration on the roads.

[Nihil]

52. Higher IQ in your area?

More drivers who know how to drive?

:shrug:

[slackmaster]

33. The ones they deployed in San Diego, at least at first, certainly don't last longer

We have burned out LEDs in traffic signals everywhere. It seems to be improving, but the first ones installed were terrible.

(And we don't have to worry about snow here.)

[truthisfreedom]

38. Same here in Minneapolis. In the western suburbs we have flickering LED signals all over.

I haven't seen that problem downtown yet, though.

[superconnected]

39. I'm only the 3rd rec for this? This sounds like something people should be aware of.

[harvey007]

42. The law of unintended consequences at work!

[Endangered Specie]

43. Another solution would be to alternate the lights, each direction has a minimum of two

make one LED and the other incadescent

[ozone_man]

46. Yes, or add a heater element

Better yet, add a temperature sensor to enable the heater element. A bit of green technology can solve this green light problem.

[Garam_Masala]

47. Listen moron drivers, if you can't see the light, STOP!!!

or at least slow down and observe like you should at every intersection.

[Nihil]

51. ** ALERT **

Presence of intelligent response noted on a thread dedicated to
defending the freedom of the American driver to be a total moron!

:nuke:

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

54. LOL!

I haven't seen the "nuke" icon in quite some time.

[napi21]

49. I don't understand this? I live in the south now so we don't have the problem, but

all our traffic signals have visors on top to prevent things like snow & ice from forming on the bulbs. The did when we lived in the NE too. Even the LED ones here have the visor.

[sylveste]

50. wind

snow and ice still gets blown on to the lights, even with the visors.

[eringer]

59. Time for Someone to Invent a Solution

How about making a bulb that uses incandescents below a certain temperature and flips to LEDs all other times. Sounds like a fix to me. Maybe one of our engineering DUers can cash in on this idea (or at least be the first to patent it).

[tabbycat31]

60. you also can't see them in the bright sun

the glare from the sun makes them impossible to see what light is on and which one is off.

[Tesha]

61. It's funny you should say that because most of the LED lights are quite a bit brighter...

than the long-life incandescent lamps that they replace.

Tesha

[m3e92man8850]

63. smells like bullshit

[Odin2005]

64. Just put a little heating element in the lamps, problem solved.