Posted on 10/12/2023 2:41:49 PM PDT by libh8er
AI will probably very useful in optimizing traffic. Saving 2 minutes per person, multiplied by a million is 33,000 hours for a city of lost productivity.
With the number of badly timed traffic lights, I welcome this. DOT’s only want to expand their reach and add lights at every turn.
An excellent project for AI.
Or AI decides all those stop lights need to go green at the same time…ouch
It could be more effective if it had Cameras and could see the traffic volumes (and your license plates of course)
One of the more frequent term projects at my local university is an optimization study of traffic lights. Students collect and analyze data and propose optimizations to the local city council which refuses to act on the data due to opposition from businesses. These businesses do not want smooth and efficient traffic flow. They want to slow traffic down so they will get more customers.
This project highlights the fact that AI is nothing more than pattern matching.
My dad explained this to me in the 1950s during one of our family’s summer road trips.
Not to make your commute easier. Not to reduce frustration and road rage. Not to save you money. Not to reduce urban hydrocarbon pollution.
Nope. To save a billion tons of carbon. That's the ticket, baby. Nothing else matters.
Why do you think it doesn’t have cameras and license plate readers? Remember the at that time fiction TV show “Person of Interest” from a couple of years ago? If Hollywood writers can think of it I suspect Google engineers have thought of it too.
“It could be more effective if it had Cameras and could see the traffic volume”
With the ubiquity of cameras on traffic lights, I’d be very surprised if it DOES NOT have that data. Plus the data from the vehicle sensor coils embedded in the pavement at every intersection.
So I doubt any "data" Big Evil Google says.
All they have to do is get rid of the stupid medians everywhere and put back in the suicide lanes. I hate having to drive a block to do a U-turn and come back. Also hate paying for all that concrete work, and water for the plants and the maintenance cost which they never seem to do.
Not so much on freeways the 405 here in CA from 7:00am to 10:00 am and from 3:00pm to 7:00pm one can reach speeds up to 15 MPH.
Will never fly in the US. Eco nazis run the show and this contradicts their goal of making driving as painful as possible because everyone’s supposed to be on a bike or walking.
Ever since Hurricane Ian the lights have never been right, it's like the only smart guy in the room retired a decade ago in that department.
In this day and age they could cameras at stop lights and along with some programing to prevent lights from forcing people to sit idle at and intersection for no reason. They can’t even produce that.
Google’s AI will of course have access to facial recognition software and automotive registry information so that soon we’ll be just like China - they can track individuals throughout the day 24/7.
back in the sixties the highway department completed I35 in Oklahoma. Prior to this completion, there was a ~45 mile gap with a two lane highway spanning the gap. There were three/four small towns, pop. 3000 spaced along the gap. When the plans for the Interstate were published, the mayors of those small towns protested. No longer would the traffic be routed down the mainstreets of these small towns because the interstate went around the towns.
The mayors petitioned the state to stop the interstate at their city limits with the traffic continuing through town on the mainstreets and then pick up the interstate outside their towns. One of the mayors was quoted as saying they were sure the people on the interstate would miss the opportunity to see their towns.
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