Distracted driving has only become more prevalent since traffic has risen to pre-pandemic levels. Last week, we covered the simple things drivers can do to tool their vehicles for hands-free phone-use.
San Francisco transportation smart technology firm LYT (pronounced “light”) is working to optimize traffic signals for both drivers in regular vehicles and for first responders and transit operators.
Traffic has a frustrating feedback loop. Distracted driving causes more bad traffic, and bad traffic causes more distracted driving. LYT spokesperson Bobby Lee illustrated this phenomenon.
“Folks in traffic are two to four times more likely to pick up that phone to start texting, or watch videos, or put in earphones, or do video calls,” Lee explained on the most recent episode of the WSB Traffic Podcast.
Distractions, of course, can lead to crashes or they can just cause people to not see when a light changes or when a bus is coming to a stop. And because of different driving aids, a driver’s connection to their driving decreases.
“We’re losing the context of what is happening on the roadway,” Lee said. “We’re becoming distracted in a different way.”
Another name for this could be complacency.
Distracted driving also stymies first responders and transit drivers. As people fail to yield to firetrucks, police, and EMS vehicles, those responders are delayed. This literally costs lives.
So LYT wants to both change how vehicles communicate with traffic signals and how priority vehicles — buses or firetrucks, for example — can communicate directly with other vehicles and nudge drivers to make way.
“We can’t build our way out of congestion. We have to optimize what we have,” Lee said. Traffic signals are pretty much the only control device on the roads.
LYT hardware and software installed in both traffic signals and in priority vehicles can force traffic signals to turn green for them: “If we can optimize that traffic signal and that roadway space for those vehicles, that’s important,” Lee said. This allows emergency vehicles coded with lights and sirens to pass more easily through an intersection, instead of hoping that people stop.
Features from both LYT and partner companies also allow them to communicate with users of Waze and Apple Maps. They also can send chimes and notifications to newer Chrysler vehicles. “These drivers are going to get alerts in their infotainment system when there is an emergency vehicle behind (them),” Lee explained.
Metro Atlanta firm Applied Information has a similar system in the Travel Safely app, where drivers who travel on connected corridors (of which there are very few, so far), get notifications when traffic signals are about to change. That can nudge them to look up from illegally using their phone and prepare to move. Any little thing helps.
As for buses, if people are not paying attention to when they start, stop, and merge, then problems happen and traffic slows. And if buses have to wait in line for the same amount of time at traffic signals as single-occupant vehicles, their arrival times are less reliable. AI can sense when a bus is already off schedule on its route and change traffic lights accordingly to help get it back on time.
These types of vehicles have been able to manually communicate with traffic lights with the drivers pressing a button to flip the light in their favor. LYT’s technology involves using artificial intelligence and learning to automatically communicate with signals without any driver effort.
Flipping signals manually, Lee said, is problematic: “You have to turn something on. You have to press something to get that green light. That just requires more cognitive load (from transit drivers). We want to move 60, 70, 80 people more safely.”
Making all of these features standard across popular apps and in different municipalities is a challenge. LYT says they are trying to overcome this by making all of their information open-source, so it can be more easily implemented. But there has to be buy-in from local governments to purchase and install the technology at signals and in vehicles.
Lee said that the best way for citizens concerned with distracted driving to get involved is to implore their local governments to get this connected hardware.
Lee also said that this issue, like many other transportation solutions, requires a public-private partnership.
Complaining about “all those other drivers” out there is easy. Actually behaving correctly takes more effort. But then petitioning local governments to use tax dollars to actually modernize traffic technology and make the roads safer is a greater load. For those truly passionate about squashing distracted driving, this is the next step.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. Download the Triple Team Traffic Alerts App to hear reports from the WSB Traffic Team automatically when you drive near trouble spots. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.
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