A suburb of Montreal, Canada, holding a test traffic lights that only turns green for good drivers who keep their speed to the limit.
In case you lost it:
Brossard, Quebec, was the first place in Canada to test traffic lights. New light is one feu de ralentissement éducatif (educational traffic lights) or FRED. It is designed to stay red until it senses an oncoming car, only turning green if the car is speeding. FRED forces fast drivers to stop and gives them a chance to really rethink their life choices.
Engineers placed FRED near a school area in Brossard, where a lot of Quebec drivers like the station. From StreetsblogMASS:
“Across Canada, near school zones, people are asking for specific measures to control speeding. This (technology) is not yet approved by the government and we will do it as an experiment,” Brossard’s mayor, Doreen Assaad, told StreetsblogMASS.
Mayor Assad added that although this is the first time it has been attempted in Canada, the same signals have been used widely across Europe for many years.
FRED lights in Brossard are being trialled for 90 days on Rue Stravinski, a two-lane street that runs through a residential suburb.
Before the lights were installed, Mayor Assaad said that Rue Stravinski had an average vehicle speed of 40 km/h (25 mph). But in the past week, the average speed has dropped to 29 km/h (18 mph).
You can see FRED in action with the funniest free music ever to the 1:30 delight of a working traffic light outside a Quebec public school. The trial run is only for the next 90 days, but such lamps have been performing well in Europe for more than a decade, CTV News report.
Of course, a random street light in the middle of a two-way street Traffic-free roads are not necessarily a barrier to reckless driving. If you’re speeding in a school zone, you might be the type of driver who ignores a red light but then gets caught by the camera. Light doesn’t just slow down mindless speeders. It relays important static information about the city about traffic and driver behavior on the road.
It’s an interesting infrastructure—one that has a lot of possibilities, especially when we rethink transportation and living in cities. I’m sure digging this is better than adding one fourth color for traffic lights for self-driving cars. Speed is the deciding factor in a quarter of all traffic deathsS. Anything that slows down demons on quiet streets is a good thing.
