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Originally Posted by orangebird
My other half works in Lighting Services for the SEC - these type of traffic lights don't exist anymore. They're on timers only.
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Really as there are some road works near me which has lights with sensors mounted on the top of them and they changed on demand for me the other day.
In answering do traffic lights have sensors / control systems the answer is yes!
In fact most of Hampshire's permenent lights run on the RoManSe system these days (
http://southampton.romanse.org.uk/) they are computer controlled and are adaptive to traffic levels and auto adjust for congestion levels. Under the road just before the lights are pressure sensors, if at night the lights are red you can approach the lights and they will automatically change for you in most cases. If there is other traffic they may hold you for a few seconds but the more cars going your way the sooner they will change, especially if a vehicle is static over the sensor.
They all report into a central computer system which relays real time data to that website (if you zoom in close enough you will see lines of different colours depending on the triggered traffic level).
They also have cameras on many of the busy junctions so if you enable the cctv option you can see what the traffic is like.
I guess southampton needs this kind of sophistication since it does hard the 3rd highest density of traffic lights in europe i believe