Flashing your headlights at temporary traffic lights

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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. 

Concerning the need for controlling one lane traffic  here in the US it all depends if it is a short term or long term situation. If it is a long term situation situation (like fixing a sink hole in Orlando) 

NOTE: Orlando is the home of numerous lakes formed from sink holes, while where I live the ground structure does not support sink holes).

They usually close the road completely while they dump massive amounts of dirt from trucks. The rerouted traffic (sometimes miles around the shut down road ) use signs showing the detour.

Here where I live, two weeks ago we had a massive 35 year old sewer line break, involving 3 million gallons of contaminated sewage going into the creek. They had a massive clean up using commercial sewage pumping trucks (we have a lot of houses with septic tanks) and they recovered up an estimated 2 million gallons from the creek. 

They used red traffic cones to redirect traffic with men with flags/signs to stop/start traffic when the pumping trucks were arriving and leaving the area. 

Peter Brooks

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).

so, what happens at roadworks and so on when there is a need for single lane working ?

Ours can be programmed to be 2 way or 3/ 4 way or remote controlled junction, and the older ones have a data cable between the units and newer ones use a UHF telemetry link at 400 and something MHz. These default to all red if the link between the sets   is jammed or fails for some reason, which is rare but very annoying as then one waits for ages and wonders if one should break the law and pass at red...

The config is by text message or by plugging in controller that comes with the kit usually co-sited with a genset. The smaller radio ones have self contained batteries and need no cables.

M

PS some literature for folk using them with standard configurations etc.

https://artsm.org.uk/media/ARTSM-Guidance-on-Use-of-Portable-Signals-1-1.pdf