Photo: Chen-jun Yi and Liang-siou Ming
It's more than often when ambulances speeding to take a patient to the hospital would run the red. Unfortunately, it looks like their extra-loud sirens, and emergency lights are not enough to be spotted in due time by some drivers, and accidents involving ambulances still happen quite often.
Designers Chen-jun Yi and Liang-siou Ming came up with Notification, a traffic light add-on system that could help prevent these crashes by warning the drivers about the approaching ambulance in their way in due time.
The two designers propose two warning methods, but only one seems like it could be implemented on a wider scale. Both ideas rely on additional lighting elements that can be triggered by the driver of the ambulance way before the car reaches an intersection.
Systems using a similar principle are already operational in the US and they involve setting all the traffic lights in an intersection to the red light, virtually forbidding any vehicle from entering the junction, and offering a safer passage for the ambulance.
Notification was created as a solution that can be implemented gradually, regardless of the country, without making extensive changes to the traffic control system on a massive scale.
Using a special type of beam to project a red cross onto the pavement doesn't seem like a good idea to us because it would be nearly impossible for the drivers to see that sign in daylight. We doubt that such a solution is feasible and practical, so we'd rather talk about the other.
However, adding a dedicated red cross traffic light could just work. The red cross lighting up near the regular traffic light while the approaching ambulance is hundreds of yards away from that intersection could make a difference.
Motorists would see the red cross flashing followed by the yellow and then the red, but they'd have plenty of time to either clear the intersection in case they can't safely stop, or come to a halt until the green light is on again.
Building a communication device that could interact with the red cross lights is quite easy, as it would involve a GSM module and the GPS locator already in the ambulance, plus a trigger button.
Receivers in the traffic light boxes would pick up the command, while integrating them with the local lights in the intersections is a matter of tapping into the wiring system.
A team of trained workers could upgrade dozens of intersections a day so that this traffic safety system could spread through busy cities quite rapidly and without sky-high costs, wouldn't it?
The two designers propose two warning methods, but only one seems like it could be implemented on a wider scale. Both ideas rely on additional lighting elements that can be triggered by the driver of the ambulance way before the car reaches an intersection.
Systems using a similar principle are already operational in the US and they involve setting all the traffic lights in an intersection to the red light, virtually forbidding any vehicle from entering the junction, and offering a safer passage for the ambulance.
Notification was created as a solution that can be implemented gradually, regardless of the country, without making extensive changes to the traffic control system on a massive scale.
Using a special type of beam to project a red cross onto the pavement doesn't seem like a good idea to us because it would be nearly impossible for the drivers to see that sign in daylight. We doubt that such a solution is feasible and practical, so we'd rather talk about the other.
However, adding a dedicated red cross traffic light could just work. The red cross lighting up near the regular traffic light while the approaching ambulance is hundreds of yards away from that intersection could make a difference.
Motorists would see the red cross flashing followed by the yellow and then the red, but they'd have plenty of time to either clear the intersection in case they can't safely stop, or come to a halt until the green light is on again.
Building a communication device that could interact with the red cross lights is quite easy, as it would involve a GSM module and the GPS locator already in the ambulance, plus a trigger button.
Receivers in the traffic light boxes would pick up the command, while integrating them with the local lights in the intersections is a matter of tapping into the wiring system.
A team of trained workers could upgrade dozens of intersections a day so that this traffic safety system could spread through busy cities quite rapidly and without sky-high costs, wouldn't it?
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