Too many traffic lights

[Kwacky]

I was having the same conversation on Saturday with Andy the bike cleaner.

It's getting pretty bad these days for trying to move anywhere without traffic lights stopping your progress. Plus people seem to be more likely to jump them these days.

I'm not suggesting we get rid of all of them, as many are needed to make sure those on smaller roads aren't blocked off by busier roads, but experiments have shown that it works without lights.

Recently a big set of traffic lights just outside Brum went down and the traffic managed without incident or police involvement.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ystem.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[D6]

Just keep all lights on green.

[D6]

I just looked at that story. Who designed that junction? what a mess,.

[Rossgo]

Too much article to read. However after coming back from Rome it shows we don't really need them. They have traffic lights and not one person takes a look at them. It makes pedestrian crossings interesting but I didn't see anyone die!! Save the money turn off all the lights!

It's funny atcially because I'm.sure Baron Von Grumble had a video up about this, he said a city turned off all their lights and people became better drivers paying more attention to the road. As we have lights we trust them to do the ur job for us, eg if it says green we go...but do we really taken in all of the information around us eg this dumbs us down. Very interesting video actually.

[Deegee]

There's quite a few junctions I know of that had traffic lights installed for no obvious reason and yes the traffic at those junctions does seem to run better if they are off for any reason, but conversely I know of an awful lot of junctions where if traffic lights were removed it would mean gridlock - the same junctions also have yellow grids that aren't respected at times.
What would be great is if we took a leaf out of the Germans book, turn off the traffic lights when not required, but go one step further than them, they turn them off at about 22.00 iirc, turn our lights off when traffic flow drops below a certain level - the roads concerned already have traffic flow counters or cctv, it's not too difficult and could ease our road system a fair bit. Just a thought.

[Spudda]

M6 Junction 10 between 6 and 9 both morning and night is a nightmare and all the surrounding roads are gridlocked.
The lights in the island went down for 3 days and it was a dream ... still slow but moving

Guess what ... yerp, they put them back on and its back to normal

[C00kiemonster]

It's one of the biggest things I notice about the UK when we drive back over. European cities and towns tend to have traffic lights but they have a system of flashing Amber which basically means treat it as a give way. It works.

[Kwacky]

The Aston Expressway was working best when they turned the contra flow off.

[Frankie]

I made this observation years ago, I spent a great deal of time in the car in London, and the lights were set up for really short green and bloody long reds.... Was becoming a joke, especially as you sit there for ever and then the plonker in front arses about before pulling away!

I think that's another reason why people were jumping lights....I see far too much of that, especially on the motorway junction lights, people just don't have any patience..... I am not perfect, but there are things you just don't do.

Writing this I recall an episode when I actually got hooted for not running a Amber/red light.... Stupid bloody driver I could not believe it
And breath....... , sorry I mean ahhhhhhhhhh