Traffic lights that stop speeders

At Beyond Cars we are big fan of automated tools to enforce rules and provide safe environments for everyone. The amount of time that law enforcement is limited and the damage done from car drivers is large in terms of injury and death. We have the tools now, let's use them.

Traditionally that's meant things like speed cameras, red light cameras, or average speed cameras.

But this one from Quebec is interesting, the traffic light defaults to red. It then monitors the speed as you approach and will only turn green if you are at or below the speed limit.

In this school zone of 30km/h, drivers were speeding:

Before the light was installed, Mayor Assaad said that Rue Stravinski had average vehicle speeds of 40 km/h (25 mph). But in the past week, average speeds have dropped to 29 km/h (18 mph).

Streetsblog

This is really interesting for a few reasons and we love ❤️ it:

• It's immediate, not weeks later in the post if it was a fine.

• No information is recorded.

• No extra infrastructure, processing or organisation is needed.

• It's using existing cheap technology that is commonly deployed.

• It rewards good behaviour.

Sounds fantastic and much more effective than a sign which measures your speed and then shows you a happy or sad face ¹.

Hattip to Cameron MacLeod for the toot pointing to the article.

Update: because someone in Government wasn't informed, the project in Quebec has been stopped.