Cities are turning to smart traffic technologies to reduce energy waste and increase road safety as traffic congestion in cities becomes an technologytraffic.com/2021/12/29/generated-post-3/ increasing problem. Among other things, this will help save time for both passengers and drivers as well as reduce emissions and reduce traffic jams.
The technology behind it is built on hardware and software. The first is the subcomponent that executes, while the second is the command and control centre. Both are complemented with advanced sensors and processing techniques like ANPR (automotive plate recognition) which records data regarding vehicle movements and can detect road signs.
Based on the type of solution, smart traffic lights are able to process data on-device or send the data to a cloud storage. This allows for more sophisticated modeling and analysis to reduce traffic congestion and harmonize schedules of public transport. According to Carnegie Mellon University, this can reduce average travel time by 25 percent, wait times for signal signals are cut by 40% and emissions are cut by 20%..
A well-designed traffic light system is not only able to reduce the time it takes to get traffic signals it can also improve the flow of pedestrians and of micromobility vehicles, such as e-bikes or e-scooters. They’re not able to adhere to traditional traffic signal preemption laws. In London, e-scooter accidents increased by 2,800% in the first half 2021. Therefore, it is important to include them in traffic lights controls.