Almost 8% of the global road traffic accidents occur in India. Much of the Internet is full of sarcasm & mocking of the undisciplined driving on Indian roads and traffic problems. Take any metro city, be it Mumbai or Hyderabad, no city is exception to the traffic problems. Other than improving basic driving sense among citizens, as an engineer i am more concerned about our traffic management system.
Virtual Wall Concept:
Product designer Hanyoung Lee has come up with something practical to replace our traffic lights of today. The Virtual Wall from Lee is basically a plasma laser barrier that highlights crosswalks on which pedestrians cross the street. The lasers are not powerful enough to harm cars or people but the effect is enough to make drivers stop and let the pedestrians cross.
Square Traffic Lights:
Nowadays, with the advent and almost ubiquitous use of LED technology in traffic signals, we’re no longer tied to archaic concepts like round lights. Russian design studio Art Lebedev argues that a square light the same height and width as a regular traffic light will draw more attention from drowsy and distracted drivers, due to the simple fact that it’s lighting a larger area overall.
Solar Powered system with News/Information:
Korean design and development studio psychic factory, proposes a system that is modeled on the standing style of traffic light. After turning red, the light swivels its LED displays to project news headlines and useful information such as the weather or time. Shortly before turning green, the display switches again, and the device returns to functioning as a normal traffic light. This way time is not wasted while waiting. Other than that this can be powered using solar power thus saving conventional energy.
Traffic Lights talking with Vehicles:
Similar to a GPS system which prompts you with location and directions, this new system will interact with your car or motorcycle and prompts you with signals. This way you receive a warning when a car’s speed suggests it will run a red light. By establishing a communication with vehicles in queue at a traffic signal, the system will calculate and may give start and stop directions to engine. This way a lot of fuel can also be saved.