Friday 9 October 2015

"Traffic lights go out at Beverley's Grovehill junction – and flow improves"

From Hull Daily Mail:

The 42 traffic lights which control the new junction – dubbed the “red light district” – went out this morning.

Grovehill Road resident Anita Tomlinson said: “The traffic has been flowing very well since the lights went out, it’s flowing like it used to do when it was just a roundabout.

“I had wondered myself what would happen if all 42 lights went out but drivers are being very careful, they are seeing what is going on and so far it appears to be flowing well.”


This will be no surprise to anybody who's already seen what happens when traffic lights are turned off, and most of us have.

5 comments:

James Higham said...

Saw that - let's try it UK wide. Incidentally, where's the gear change?

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, yes, let's try it. It's in the YPP manifesto.

As to gear changes, they are a bit out of fashion at the moment, I have only heard two new ones in the last three years. But don't worry, they will come ba-ack.

Radical Rodent said...

That is precisely why traffic lights are used, nowadays; they are not to improve the flow of traffic, they are to impede its flow. It is possibly a belief ingrained into the minds of politicians of all shades – only the rich can afford cars, so let’s make life difficult for them. The politics of envy is still rampant, in this country.

Anonymous said...

Not a criticism it's just that I was held up at an intersection in Mississauga (think Toronto) because two idiots jointly t-boned each other at 04:30. The cause? The lights had failed.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RR, yes, there is this whole "anti-car" thing going on. But as a pedestrian and a bus passenger I have also noticed that my life is easier when the lights are switched off.

BR - if the two cars were expecting the lights to be working and behaved accordingly, then things will go wrong. For the purposes of this discussion, we have to assume that drivers know that the lights are not working.