App Tells You When Traffic Lights Turn Green

Attention technophiles, impatient motorists and dullards. The boffins over at MIT - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - have developed an app’ that can successfully predict when a traffic light will turn green, and advise the driver at what speed to travel to avoid stopping. Clever stuff.

To make the system work, users need to attach their smartphones to their windscreens, like they would a portable sat-nav. The phone will take photos incrementally, and then use sophisticated algorithms to work out when the light is due to change. Apparently, it’s accurate to within one second for pre-phased lights, and 2.5 seconds for those that change according to traffic flow.

Though the system will tell you when the light is about to change red, it’ll never tell you to speed up - only slow down. Not that you have to listen to it, mind...

Here’s to hoping we’ll see it in practice soon enough.

Image: Horia Varlan