So you'd need some equipment to do anything to them. And that equipment would have to basically shut down the intersection. So do it at 4am and hope that nobody drives by for the half hour you're there.
> since drivers can see them they tend to speed up if the light is about to change.
This is easily solved. For example, intersection just outside my window [1] has LED timers next to traffic lights, but the countdown is blanked (turned off) for the last five seconds, not to encourage reckless speeding.
The blanking appears to work just fine, judging by the way the traffic flows. I pass the intersection daily, both by car and on foot.
I have a few intersections near me that desperately needed to have the lights added but only for busy times of day. At night it can take 5 minutes to get through a battery of lights even with virtually no traffic.
I suspect choosing not to flash them at night is some combination of people not really familiar with that system getting potentially confused and (these are somewhat complex intersections) others just getting careless rather than carefully checking, at night, all the directions that traffic could be coming from.
I've always wondered how you handle those lights at night, if you can't see the enclosure; and how you handle the occasional horizontal traffic light, which my town has one of.
Some curiosities from seeing them on the road a lot. You can tell it's them even when you can't see the extra protuberances:
- They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds.
- They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights.
- When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out in batches of 2-4. If a block has a hazy red hue at night, you know you've found a Waymo nest.
> Modern rechargeable electricial markers that could last all night were not common at all.
Is this common where you drive? Where I drive in the US, it's all traffic cones with reflective parts, relying on cars to have their headlights on to see the temporary barriers.
It looks like those are specifically designed to be triggered by bikes. I've been at intersections with a 50-100cc motorcycle that would not trigger the light.
Totally agree with this, and love them in the common case (intersections of single lane streets). And we have a few in various places, however the lack of experience with the American driver leads to some interesting results. One person insisted that when there wasn't a light you had to treat it like a 4-way stop!
Oh yeah of course. But I have rarely seen these mods done and not used on the road. Most times people who make them either aren’t aware of their local laws or don’t consider what it looks like when you have e.g. red blinking red lights on the front of their vehicle.
So you'd need some equipment to do anything to them. And that equipment would have to basically shut down the intersection. So do it at 4am and hope that nobody drives by for the half hour you're there.
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