Unintended hazard: Energy-efficient traffic lights can't melt snow

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091216/ap_on_re_us/us_snow_covered_stoplights

by cwan • 17 years ago

38 23 17 years ago

news.yahoo.com

kw_• 17 years ago

The problem is pretty well known, with (I believe) several companies selling heaters that activate in cold weather.

I was even able to find articles that mentioned the issue dating back to Q4 2000.

As such, I'm not sure why this is all over the internet today. Somebody ignored a well-known issue and bought the wrong product. It worked as expected.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Why bother with heaters? A plastic cap in front of the tubular 'hood' should work just as well and is a one-off cost. In the photo you can see the problem is the snow piling up inside the tubular shade. Cap the tube and gravity will do the rest.

marze2• 17 years ago

Snow can be sticky and sticky snow would stick to a plastic window.

janzer• 17 years ago

Notice the sign to the right of the signal. Even though it is a straight vertical surface it's covered as well. Blowing wet snow will stick to just about anything.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

OK, heaters it is I guess. I grew up in a wet climate and when we got snow it was too heavy to stick to anything but the ground. D'oh, for assuming snow was snow.

eplawless• 17 years ago

This is a lot like the conductive metal buttons the city installed earlier this year at a number of pedestrian crossings here in Ottawa. They've worked great all summer, they don't wear out as quickly because they aren't mechanical, but they're just now starting to realize that once February hits and it's -30C outside you'll have to take off your gloves and touch some metal to cross the street. Oh well, I guess the cost of progress is sometimes being stuck to a metal pole.

furyg32• 17 years ago

Here in Amsterdam we have something similar (a button that doesn't push-in) but they're made of plastic, work with gloves, and light up when they're pressed.

Raphael• 17 years ago

Maybe you could carry a steak around.

mahmud• 17 years ago

Wikipedia doesn't have a disambiguation page for "steak", and I am really guessing you didn't mean a thick juicy cut of loin from premium Australian beef, done medium rare.

If I carried that around, I would be melting the snow.

furyg32• 17 years ago

I wonder if a clear plastic shield coated in Teflon would work...

ars• 17 years ago

Teflon is not clear. Maybe really thin? But it's quite difficult to attach teflon to anything.

jules• 17 years ago

Or make the tubes (more) open at the bottom and tilt the lights a little bit.

pmjordan• 17 years ago

Yep, that's how it's done with most traffic lights in central Europe, e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30626457@N00/4580229/

I've never seen lights with that design obscured by snow, and many are LED based now.

malkia• 17 years ago

Leaky Abstraction!... Well not really - just reminded me of it. Sometimes making the things simpler (e.g. consuming less energy) calls for unexpected effects.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"Sometimes making the things simpler (e.g. consuming less energy) calls for unexpected effects."

Simple is complicated.

imrehg• 17 years ago

Accidents are terrible things, but I'm not exactly sure why to blame those traffic accidents on the lights instead of the drivers. First rule: drive as the driving conditions permit. Had it been a power-cut or a mist (making the traffic lights similarly unusable), would people still blame the lights if someone crashes their car? Unintended: sure. Hazard: quite possibly. Driving carefully: priceless...

epochwolf• 17 years ago

If you can't see the lights you can misread the signals. I live in Green Bay, WI and I saw most of the lights along my morning route to school were covered on north/south lanes but clear on east/west. It was very very difficult to determine what light I had even using the east/west lights to rule out them having a green light. I had several close calls. Additional in Green Bay visibility was quite poor and the roads were dangerous.

As for people missing the signals, I have a theory. Everyone I know determines if they have a red, yellow, or green light by looking at the color of the light. (Bear with me here.) I look at the position of the light instead of the color. I am the only person I know with normal vision that does this. From the number of people I've asked, only those with colorblindness read lights by position. I would assume this means most people look for a light to find a stoplight. Given poor visibility the lack of a visible light means people won't see the signal.

Free feel to poke holes in my theory or ask me questions about my specialness with street lights.

marze2• 17 years ago

The heater should trigger on the detection of signal light reflected from snow.

ZeroGravitas2• 17 years ago

I wonder how the rate of covering by snow compares with blown bulbs needing replaced, as both result in the lights not being visible. (Though I'm guessing it's more likely for more than one light to be obscured by snow than to be blown, which might makes things worse (or better?))

In areas where there is little or no snow then this would be an (un?)expected benefit of the change to more efficient lights.

nico• 17 years ago

Same thing with halogen vs xenon car lights. One of the reasons xenon kits are illegal in many countries, they lack wipers and xenon lights can't melt snow (they usually also lack lenses, hence they dazzle other drivers).

Unintended hazard: Energy-efficient traffic lights can't melt snow

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