Let’s be honest. Timing of lights is absurd. You shouldn’t have to stop at every single intersection. Proper timing would allow and clean flow of cars from one light to another. Force everyone to stop every half a mile for no reason, and you’ll have drivers try to speed to the next one. Hell, even 90 years ago they were able to do it. Yet now they can’t? And everywhere you go, is slightly different , so you have no idea what will happen at the next intersection unless you constantly drive that road
Now the lights have weight sensors, so a light will never turn red unless it needs to. There are no timing schedules to adjust to, whoever gets there 1st will help trigger it faster. On 2nd thought, if the intersection is busy enough where someone is always waiting and the lights are constantly being triggered, I guess it wouldn't be any different from the lights in this video. So yes it does help to find an even speed. Extend your brake life and get there just as fast.
As a traffic engineer that times signals, this is so frustrating. If you're the lead car, the offset to the next signal is based on you going the speed limit. When you get passed, those drivers arrive too early and cause the platoon to experience small hiccups in flow. Then everyone things the signals are timed bad...no, just go the speed limit!
So traffic light synchronization was developed in the '30s yet traffic engineers today can't figure out how to properly time lights to the speed limit?
It's harder than you would think. You can only have sensors in so many areas, someone drives in from a side street and sync is ruined, someone parks their car and the same happens. It could work if every car was required to have a transponder or GPS tracking but that's too intrusive.
I love these old films. For better or worse, they serve as an amazing reminder of how different the world was not that many years ago. That said, it's kind of amazing that the traffic lights used 75 years ago look almost identical to today's. The drivers apparently weren't much different either....
No, the drivers were much worse. Most of them grew up in the days of horse and carriages, so were much more likely to treat things like driving on the right side of the road as a suggestion.
Programming traffic light systems isn't much different to the cams and contact systems either, you can have cam timers displayed in software for the PLCs used for light control now.
One thing that's neat with these old lights, is the red+amber and the green+amber. I don't know when they stopped doing that, or if some places still do it.
In Poland we get red+amber or just amber (when it turned from green). I think that the idea is that red+amber reminds that "it is not yet go time", while just amber is meant to imply "it is no longer 'go' signal" so that is why they ditched green+amber.
There was a stoplight in Atmore, Alabama (Church @ Pressley) that worked still this way into the 21st century for some bizarre reason. I'm not sure if it was leftover from the days before standardization or if it was malfunctioning somehow, but amber would always stay on for a bit with red or green. My grandmother got into an accident at this intersection, and when both drivers claimed they had the right of way, the town finally replaced it with a four-way stop. This was in the late 2000s.
In countries with a majority of vehicles being manual shift stick, the red + amber lights come on to ready the driver to allow him to change into 1st gear. This is the same reason in races why they use amber lights.
Most of Russia has a red+amber phase for 1 to 3 seconds before the light turns green. It's not required though, and there's plenty of junctions where the lights go red straight to green, in American style. Moscow is the most prominent example. Also, almost at every traffic light junction, the green light flashes for 3 seconds before it turns yellow.
Wait are your traffic lights not “smart”? In the UK, most of our traffic lights have induction loops which detect traffic build-up, making the light turn green when necessary.
Like with rail signals today, a Fourth aspect on a signal back then could have been various things, but usually Lunar or a straight up clear lens in front of an incandescent bulb.
Gregory May You still can - it's a matter of timing it just right. If you stay at exactly the speed limit, you'll usually catch every green as they change.
What a fun video! Never knew there were so many types of traffic signals. Stop on YELLOW? Ridiculous. Interesting seeing GREEN on top and RED on bottom. What were the FOUR COLORS, mentioned?? Myvife's hometown in China uses countdown numbers! RED: 49,48,47...3,2,1 GREEN: 59,58,57 You can start coasting when you realize the signal will be RED before you get it. (I use our countdown WALK signals the same way.)
Some of each selected scenes are appeared in the episode of Spongebob Squarepants titled "Oral Report" when Spongebob says the complete essay about vehicle trafficking.
Traffic lights have hardly changed in the past 60 years. I think one improvement long overdue is to make them larger to make them much more visible from greater distance. When they were first invented there was not as much competition from other lighting sources that would inhibit visibility. Now is a different story.
It's funny how they actually cared about keeping the flow of traffic moving. Today it's all about sitting at red light when there no opposit traffic or putting 10 lights in a 1000 feet stretch. Gotta love all the fuel wasted.
From what I see, it's a very complicated synchronization of traffic lights with a ton of variables to be taken into consideration. Traffic ingineers have a tough job to do.
Anyone else notice the transition of black and white to color I was going to make a joke on how we can’t see the red or green but no they added color somehow
These days a dual indication like y/g or r/y would create a fault in the monitor. I do wonder why the Federal Highway and Transportation Admin and did away with the the dual indicator system? Seems a logical safety feature. Id like to see that study if it prevented more accidents or caused more. There was also a time there was no all red clearance interval. It was instant change from red to green on opposing sides. As a traffic light collector and enthusiast, videos like this are amazing.
Here in Russia, we still have red+yellow before green. However red straight to green is permitted if the traffic light is not in a coordinated network. (I hate red straight to green personally) All-red intervals here are not required, my local intersection is pretty big and yet I've never seen a crash due to that. There's a nearby intersection with an all-red interval, however, probably because it's busier. More recently, since the early 2000s, flashing green for 3 seconds before yellow has been introduced.
I'm surprised that the USA still doesn't require drivers to treat an amber light as 'must stop unless unsafe to do so', instead of 'go for it... you might beat the red'. 👻
It actually depends on the state. In some states like Oregon, you can get a ticket for "running a yellow light" if it was safe to stop but you chose to put your foot down.
The Clocksignal, maybe not but there are SOME semaphore signals in the hand of collectors today, the exact make of semaphore as seen in this video, an ACME currently owned by this gentlemen. : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ooF9il6DZ-w.htmlsi=_sFclWr99fPdUv3O Rare but could be found today in a few collections, crazy to think some even survived.
How the fuck is someone supposed to know how long it will take for each light to change during a green wave? Granted, they should stomp on it when the light turns green when there's another red light right up ahead.
im in the US and are traffic lights dont use the red and amber-green and amber tipes of signals. we use red-green-green-amber. im not talking about the green amber signal tipe.
I failed my first driving test for turning right on a yellow from a full stop. Even my driving instructor didn't even know this was illegal! From a full stop, you can turn right on a red or a green, but not a yellow. Go figure.
But I was already stopped. I had a green, and was going to turn right, but had to stop for a pedestrian. Once they cleared, I started moving and turned just after the light turned yellow. This is illegal.
@@PointyTailofSatan i know this is old but for other people reading, the reason it's illegal is because the yellow light means stop when it's safe to do so. Turning right on yellow is like being stoped a yellow and then darting thru the intersection when you should just wait out the red