Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

vrt.be

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 190 posts

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#31

Post by LadyCailin »

dalben wrote: post #7

Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.

In the US, there’s a thing called the Opticom. It’s just an extra light that is installed along with the normal light bar, and the traffic light recognizes the strobe pattern, and changes. https://www.fedsig.com/product/opticom/

No app required.

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#32

Post by jeroenhd »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #19
jeroenhd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure they're using weight sensors? AFAIK wire loops seem much more useful, plus they have the advantage of also picking up bikes and other lightweight traffic more accurately. I can also tell you that even in a country with sensors all over the place, I do sometimes end up waiting on an intersection with no traffic. I assume it's some kind of public transportation/emergency vehicle priority system activating,…

From what I've heard, they don't always use the sensors; sometimes they're on a fixed schedule during the day and on request only overnight. Or they might be a fixed schedule always; a classmate at uni did a project around modelling traffic flow and found an intersection or two that turned out to be configured differently from how the council expected; probably a setting that was changed once and never revisited.

I've seen this happen as well, but on different time slots. I think some of it is intentional (the algorithm designed to regulate busy intersections across an entire main road probably doesn't work well when there are only a few people on the road). The ones that operate on a timer all day every day seem to be bugged out, though.

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#33

Post by scoopertrooper »

dalben wrote: post #7

Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.

What are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#34

Post by jeroenhd »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #24
BrenBarn wrote: post #5

I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.

It hardly seems like the Flemish government are going to create an app that's a serious competitor to Google Maps etc. Even just reaching something reasonably functional for driving directions would be an awful lot of work.

There are some good open-source apps for driving directions. The big problem with those apps is often the lack of a source for live traffic information, but the government probably has something for that already, so hooking that up into an open-source app should be quite effective. Shouldn't be too hard to advertise an app if it means you see more green lights on your journey.

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#35

Post by antonvs »

gregoriol wrote: post #26
antonvs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxi drivers might have said the same thing about Uber. These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established, and projects like this become possible precisely because they’re not that complicated to build or maintain. They take advantage of common infrastructure, and can often be cheaper than supposedly “simpler” alternatives.

How many news did we get recently about such "tech" products becoming disabled because 2G was gone, because the app was gone, ... Road lights should last 20+ years, no app/connected system will last that long.

Google Maps is 20 years old.

The connectivity at the traffic lights can be a small box, easily replaced, much more cheaply than e.g. traffic sensors under the road.

If the system fails for some reason, such as an internet outage, traffic lights can fall back to ordinary timing.

You’re not raising serious objections.

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#36

Post by __alexs »

jeroenhd wrote: post #25
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #13

I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically…

This isn't a system to detect if there are cars at an intersection. Wire loops and other systems already can and do measure cars like that. This is a system to detect "in 32 minutes, twenty-five cars will come from the south, crossing sixteen cars from the east. By pausing the western traffic lights for three seconds, both streams of cars can drive past each other without clogging up the main intersection". Users don…

Do you know if there is any documentation on how they actually implement the algorithms behind it?

Seems like possibly it's a small enough region that you could cram it into a MILP solver?

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#38

Post by __alexs »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #33
dalben wrote: post #7

Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.

What are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?

At least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.

Re: 200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green

#39

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #13

I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically…

Cyclist aren't massive nor hot, on a hot summerday they will be cooler than the road surface. I think a camera with object recognition or something similar should be able to do it.

It's not the first time apps are being shoved where they shouldn't belong by the Flemish Government. They made a cooking app of half a million Euro [1] and there were trials where you could use an app to to get the deposit back on plastic bottles by scanning the bottle and your wastebag [2].

I'm not sure if it's incompetence, trying to look modern or just plain old corruption.

[1] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2025/05/27/kookapp-van-vlaamse-...

[2] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/05/23/cordacampus-proefpro...

Post reply on HN