Intelligent Lights

You know, the biggest innovation in traffic lights are the sensors in the ground that detect if a car is around. Surprisingly, there's not been anything new that I can see.

This is what I want. It would be nice to have a camera aimed at the traffic, and estimate how much traffic has arrived, and to adjust the lights based on approaching traffic and crowdedness rather than a simple algorithm based on time. Admittedly, there might be some kind of equilibrium that you reach by using timed lights.

But whatever. It seems like we should be able to get more intelligent light changing that makes people wait less on average.