As part of the unremitting efforts in all countries to ensure driving operations with the greatest possible safety standards, traffic lights may be added in the future with a new color on the side of green, red and orange.
The new white color will be allocated to self-driving vehicles, helping them to pass crowded intersections, according to a new technology.
The proposal, according to researchers at North Carolina State University, aims to reduce levels of traffic congestion and overall fuel consumption in the future.
Cars and trucks driving themselves will not need to look at a white traffic light, because they will communicate with them wirelessly.
The vehicles’ radio response to white will signal human drivers to follow.
According to the magazine “Science Alert”, civil engineer Ali Hajbaei says: “The red lights will still mean stop, and the green lights will still mean go, and the white lights will tell drivers to simply follow the vehicle in front of them.”
Any human driver will be told to follow the driverless car ahead at a white light, stop if it stops, continue if it continues.
Once the number of self-driving vehicles at an intersection drops below a certain limit, the traffic lights will revert to the normal red, orange and green option.
Hajbaei says it’s important to incorporate the concept of white light at intersections because it tells human drivers what’s going on, so they know what they’re supposed to do when they approach an intersection.
During the experiments, the researchers noted that once the number of self-driving vehicles at an intersection exceeds 30 percent, the traffic improvements become more significant.
It takes time and money to develop each intersection, of course, but the researchers believe that some aspects of the white-stage idea can be implemented relatively easily.
