New LED Traffic Lights
So, this information isn’t totally about automobiles but it is related to them and I thought it was valuable enough information to pass along to you guys. There are new energy-efficient traffic lights (well actually they aren’t really too new. They’ve been around about a decade.) Anyways, some states are just introducing them and when the weather is bad, such as snow and wind, the traffic lights don’t work correctly, or really at all. Drivers cannot see if the light is red or green because the lights aren’t bright enough to melt snow and ice that may get on the lights. Normally, the lights will melt the ice, but the new LED, energy-efficient lights are not bright enough to melt the snow. There have been dozens of accidents and 1 death that is to blame on these LED lights.
Of course the problem is that these traffic lights save money and quite a bit of it. In Wisconsin, the Transportation Department says that they save about $750,000 a year with these lights. That’s a lot of money. Some states report that the traffic light problems only happen every so often when the snow and wind are perfectly aligned to cause the problems and by the time they get out to the light after a complaint has been made, the problem has fixed itself. Then other states say that they people need to actually clean off the snow by hand, which is somewhat of a problem I think.
The moral of the story is that drivers need to be aware during a snowstorm that the traffic lights aren’t always working properly and really what you need to do is if the traffic light is hard to see then just assume it’s like a stop sign and STOP. Simple solution to the problem, right? Energy efficient is not always the end all be all I tell ya.