AI and Traffic Lights

Does anyone have suggestions for stocks that cover the tin foil industry?

iansane said:

Yeeeesss. Then maybe it'll hold off for the extra 3 seconds I, as the last car in a pack, needs to get through a light before changing for that one single car on a side road.

This is already a thing that smart intersections do with basic cameras and sensors, no tracking required.  They'll hold off changing the primary intersection, within a certain defined window of time, until a pack of cars finishes passing, or to avoid causing a large truck to have to stop and start up again.  In both cases this improves traffic flow dramatically.

This depends heavily on quality of setup and definition of priorities though.  Seeing them in action, in some cases it's really neat watching them consistently wait for the 'pack' to pass.  Likewise if the primary road has been green long enough or is empty, a car approaching from the secondary road will get an instant green before they need to begin slowing.

The above is great for widely-spaced intersections where one does not meaningfully affect another.  But optimizing strings of closely spaced lights in urban areas is a whole different problem.

In reply to RedGT :

They must not have any smart intersections in Washington.