This undated photo provided by the University of Michigan College of Engineering shows vehicles as they drive through the Old Woodward Avenue and East Maple signalized intersection, which was retimed using the Optimized Signal as a Service , in Birmingham, Mich.
A few years later, Detroit police officer William Potts is credited with adding the yellow light, though as a city employee he couldn’t patent it. By 1930, Nelson wrote, all major American cities and many smaller ones had at least oneThe advent of connected and automated vehicles, though, has presented a world of new possibilities for traffic signals.
Although Hajbabaie's research refers to a “white phase” and possibly even a white light, the specific color isn’t important, he said. Current lights could even suffice, say, by modifying them to flash red and green simultaneously to signal that driverless cars are in charge. The key would be making sure that it's universally adopted like the current signals are.
“While it is good at this early stage of AV development that people are thinking creatively about how to facilitate the safe deployment of safe AVs, policymakers and infrastructure owners should be careful about jumping too soon on AV-specific investments that may turn out to be premature or even unnecessary,” Karp said in an email to The Associated Press.
The 34 traffic signals in Birmingham were chosen because, like more than half of the signals nationwide, they’re set to a fixed-time schedule without any cameras or sensors to monitor congestion. Liu said although there are higher-tech solutions to monitoring traffic, they require cities to make complex and expensive upgrades.