Flashing your headlights at temporary traffic lights

For example one evening last week (it was still daylight) we were out and about and while driving through a local village we came across some roadworks. As we approached the temporary lights you could see that there were no cars waiting on the other side so he starts flashing our headlights and in a few seconds the lights turn green.

I've seen similar symptoms, but the cause is I suspect different. In some of the semi-rural areas around here you can see lights that settle on all-red when there's no traffic about, and then change to green for approaching traffic pretty much as it arrives - but triggered I'm sure by the Doppler system that Mike described.  It would be an interesting to repeat your partner's experiment, under the exact same conditions, but without flashing headlights and see if the change the same anyway - I suspect they would.

  - Andy.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if it appears to work quite often, as it's quite likely that due to the time before the driver gets bored and starts flashing their lights is very similar to the time interval chosen for the crossing change (because it needs to be short enough to not cause an impatient driver to jump the lights).

Something I’ve seen widely used in France is a countdown timer at temporary lights so you can see how long you have to wait. Love that idea!  Stops people getting frustrated as they know exactly how long there’ll be there for. It’s kinda like how they now have more info at bus stops so you know how far away the bus is and also on the train apps too. So you’re not always wondering if it’s going to turn up . I’d love to see the countdown timer approach being adopted here in the UK as well. May also stop people from jumping those red lights and causing havoc at the other end if they knew the sequence changes every 2 mins or so. 

Something I’ve seen widely used in France is a countdown timer at temporary lights so you can see how long you have to wait. Love that idea!  Stops people getting frustrated as they know exactly how long there’ll be there for. It’s kinda like how they now have more info at bus stops so you know how far away the bus is and also on the train apps too. So you’re not always wondering if it’s going to turn up . I’d love to see the countdown timer approach being adopted here in the UK as well. May also stop people from jumping those red lights and causing havoc at the other end if they knew the sequence changes every 2 mins or so. 

Plus 1 for that idea of count down timers on temporary traffic lights for the UK

Interesting - I do a lot of work on improving safety at level crossings (road / railway crossings), where we have big issues with impatient crossing users doing silly (and sadly occasionally fatal) things, I'm wondering if there's something in that idea that we can use - I don't think we could use a countdown timer as such as there's always a chance of the train stopping as it approaches the crossing which would throw the time off, but there may be something - I might throw it in next time we're brainstorming ideas!

This is true engineering.  People having open discussions and making things better for everyone in general.  

Hello Lisa:

Why not count down clocks on permanent signal lights? We have them at selected interchanges here in the US. 

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL

Hello Andy:

Here in my area we have major railway/road crossing problem.

Within the past year we have started private passenger (high speed trains) train service from Miami to Orlando using lines that previously only carried slow moving goods trains usually at night. High speed means about 80 mph max. This passenger service typically has one major accident per month. 

Down south they had one between a Firetruck and the train-- the train won.

Unlike the UK we do not use a BOX system  at crossings (gates swinging outwards) they just raise gates only up and down, The BOX system is only required for speeds over 80 mph.

Just in our county (about 70 miles) we have 37 separate level crossings.

They are now adding barriers (whenever possible) between each side of the traffic (close to the crossing) to prevent people going around the gates.  

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL

The only time I have seen countdowns on traffic lights was in India, in the city of Hyderabad.
This was about 25 years ago, and I found it utterly incredible to witness. The relative cost of fuel and wages/ human life was such that in all but the grandest vehicles, engines are turned off until the count reaches about 10, and then there is a frantic clanking and grinding of starter motors between 10 and about 5, and in some of the more dilapidated machines passengers get ready to push or negotiate how they will shunt start if they know the car behind. Then between 2 and zero, the traffic moves off with the odd bump and ding and a  lot of honking and the whole 'slug' of traffic accelerates more or less as one, not in a chain as in the UK.
Remarkable in my eyes to witness, impossible to cross the road, and really, really efficient in terms of cars per cycle, but lethal.

We'd need a complete reprogramming of road safety culture to do that here.
Mike

I remember seeing similar in Singapore about 20 years ago for pedestrian crossing.  They had a count down timer for the pedestrian to cross the road.

mapj1 said:

We'd need a complete reprogramming of road safety culture to do that here

Agreed.  Maybe we do need to change the UK road safety culture.

Also some count down clocks have a chirping sound for blind people.

Peter Brooks

I guess by a box crossing you mean what we'd call a gated crossing? There's still a few left in the UK but I don't know of any on high speed lines. For high speed lines it'll be lifting barriers right across the roadway, for lower speeds it may be half barriers across one side of the road. Except at Redcar where there are sliding gates. Then we still have a vast number of "user worked crossings" - i.e. a gate and a sign saying "look out for trains"! We're slowly getting warning lights at least rolled out across those.