What potential pros and cons can you think of with this energy saving idea?

The cons? Massive slaughter and huge amounts of property damage on America’s highways. Bad, bad idea.

There are enough ID10T drivers that don’t stop for the red light now as it is, don’t go giving them another excuse not to stop.

@lillycoyote Why would there be massive slaughter? The adjustment period would probably be pretty rough, yeah, but is there any real reason why this would be dangerous once people got used it?

This might require MORE lighting at night just to see that there is “no light” since motorists would not be sure if they are approaching a 2-way stop intersection, 4-way stop intersection, or a traffic light stop intersection.

This would also cause more people to be cautious as they approach, thus pumping the brakes, thus leading to increased fuel consumption (or power for electric vehicles).

I see this creating increased energy consumption, if anything.

@Paradox1 Good point, night driving…. I hadn’t even thought about night driving. Stupid me.

The power savings would be minimal, even without taking into consideration energy consumption by vehicles. You would only save power about half of the time, and you would only be saving the amount of power used by the stoplight, which isn’t much.

I would suggest replacing traffic lights with traffic circles or roundabouts. These are proven to have fewer accidents and allow a higher traffic flow. Even though each individual person may take longer going through a traffic circle than driving through a stop light, there is no waiting for lights. This reduces the average amount of time used to traverse it, saving time, energy and money.

@Mariah, because, even though driving eventually becomes almost second nature it is still a complex task that requires you to pay attention to a lot of things all at once. That’s why there are signs and signals all over the place. Nothing, the no light is difficult to catch when you are paying attention to a lot of things and traveling at high speed. People need signal, signs, bright colors, flashing light. Everything needs to be clear when you are driving, you need to pick up “signals” information ahead of you, behind you, in your peripheral vision, with your ears. There’s a lot of input. I just think “nothing” instead of a read light is a bad idea.

@PhiNotPi You’d be saving power all the time because there’s always a red light going in one direction, right?

@lillycoyote Good points.

Just trying to think outside the box, folks.

@Mariah, that’s always good, to think outside the box and the nice thing about fluther is that you always have people to bounce your ideas off of.

@Mariah You would be saving energy all of the time, but only half of the energy used by the stoplights. Each individual stoplight will be saving all of its energy half of the time.

@lillycoyote Exactly why I posted, because I was certain I was grossly overlooking something…and I was right!

@PhiNotPi Thanks, I’m having a derpy day.

After reading all your input, it aaaalmost seems like my original idea could work (getting rid of the green light) as it would be just like going through a stop sign intersection (only stop if you have an indication to stop and go through if you don’t), except for that stupid issue with power outages. Grr.

You could have a backup power supply, but those would be costly to install for each traffic light. That is where we cross the line from theoretically to practically useful ideas. Tons of stuff is amazing in theory, but in the end something causes it to have massive overhead costs or (in your case) the possibility that a small failure could have massive consequences.

There is a software for your smartphone that helps you avoid red lights and can help reduce consumption.

I know I read a study or two of cities that lengthened yellow lights and decreased usage of reds and cut fuel consumption by something like 10%...I can’t find any of them on the Net right now though

I would go this route if it were up to me, solar powered traffic lights; renewable energy source, doesn’t use fossil fuels and doesn’t require a complete redesign of the traffic light system and retraining of drivers who already have enough trouble not running into each other as it is.

Traffic lights are switching to LEDs, which are pretty low energy. One unfortunate consequence of this is that they do not generate enough heat to melt snow.

@Mariah, I still can’t find the exact articles I’m looking for, but some places have gotten rid of all or most of their traffic lights not only to cut consumption but also to reduce traffic accidents.

In my area, they’re getting rid of lights and implementing more round-abouts in “accident prone” intersections/interstate exits.

I did find this article on a Dutch town that removed all but 3 traffic lights with plans to remove the rest over the next few years

If you have ever been in FL after a hurricane you would easily understand why this won’t work. When traffic lights are out everyone is supposed to treat intersections as four way stops. Even in daylight people screw this up and blow through the intersection. Having no red, is essentially no traffic light during a red. Which as I write this I realize the driver would not know if the power is out, or if the light was just “red.” At night it would be a distaster, as someone mentioned above. After hurricanes we have a curfew, no one allowed outside after dark. Two main reasons, curb looting and safety on the road due to traffic lights not working.

I am in favor of red yellow, letting the driver know the light is changing to green. Or, maybe it let the driver know the light is changing to red? I can’t remember. If it let’s the driver know the light os changing to green, drivers don’t slow down when at a distance from a light anticipating the green, which saves gas. But, I guess it uses more electricity and bulbs.

That would be really dangerous in the dark, or in rain or snow, because no light could be interpreted as “NO LIGHT” if you couldn’t see the traffic light at all. My energy-saving idea would be to change the bulbs to LED bulbs, both in traffic lights and in street lights. They take less energy, right? Or would the extra cost of the bulbs be counter-productive?

Traffic circles save way more.

@JLeslie Yes, and they remove lights. That’s what I linked above.

@SpatzieLover Oh, I did not realize that was on your link, I had not clicked on it. I was just thinking about when I was in the UK, and we even had some circles in FL. There are also some in Cancun.

We have many. They reduce accidents, consumption and energy.

Our area is doing studies to see if we can implement more.

@Mariah‘s thoughts are on on the money. Red lights cost energy. Red lights also increase intersection accidents.

@SpatzieLover I wonder how it affects fuel consumption? Everyone has to slow for a circle, and starting back up burns a lot of fuel. With a green light we can drive right through. Although, at minor intersections usually people can get away with not having to stop completely if there is a circle.

I bet my city would be against it considering how many traffic cameras are up to catch a driver going through a red. They probably would not want to lose the revenue from the tickets. Someone once told me the camera ticketing actually does not bring in a lot of money in the end, I wonder if that is true? They keep putting up the cameras.

Idling wastes fuel

Hybrids save fuel due to gas engine shut off during idling

@SpatzieLover That makes sense. I wasn’t considering the idling as part of the equation.

I’ve never thought of this before. It’s a great idea, but it would never work. People have grown so used to the way things are now, that changing it now would only result in hundreds, maybe thousands of accidents. There’s no way people would follow any laws that would prevent this from happening if we did cut traffic lights out of the picture. Maybe we could downsize on them a bit though?