PROBLEM: Inattentive drivers cause traffic delays by not moving at green lights. It's also hard to see traffic lights behind a bus. It's also unsafe to look for signs and lights while driving.
PROPOSAL: Put traffic lights in every car. When the light turns green (or yellow or red), all the cars waiting get a green signal (or yellow or red). Stop signs would transmit as "flashing red," and yield signs as "flashing yellow."
SPECIFICS: A traffic signal emits a digital message with its intersection's global position, and the flow message for each direction of travel. An in-car detector knows its global position and direction of travel (via internal compass), and displays the correct traffic signal. If a detector knows its location and orientation, it will always know which signal is the nearest one ahead.
BENEFITS: Quicker traffic flow. Drivers can keep their eyes on the road. Prettier streets and lower maintenance costs (no lights or signs). Less maintenance costs (no more lights or signs).
RISKS: Traffic lights must be backed up, perhaps by satellite or FM radio (if a signal were to go down, the car would try to display the signal of the next signal down the street). Cars cannot be driven at all unless the in-car detector works.
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excellent idea. the reliability really must be 100% or this is a non-starter... obviously. There are times where the sun, a bus, or traffic position works out that the lights are difficult to see, and the solution is simple and elegant.
Hopefully, the traffic computer also records the cars pending crossing that timings might also be dynamic in such a system.
In some systems, the yellow light comes on before the green to let people know to rev-up and be ready to release the clutch... likely this would sort your concern that traffic start efficiently on "green".
How about a "wake up alarm" instead of a light. This could have "buzz" for stop and "ding!" for go. Other, more effective sounds also come to mind.
I have a greater concern regarding individuals not paying attention when driving and emergency vehicles.
Why can't automakers put a chip in all cars that when an autorized emergency vehicle is within a specific distance launches a message on the cars radio system?
The idea itself is good, but the implementation would be impossible, at least with current technology. To get this to work properly, you would need a GPS system that's accurate to the foot, and the only people who have that accurate GPS are the military (there's a law that doesn't allow civilian GPS to get more accurate than several hundred feet; stupid law, but still a law).
Making this even harder, is that you would need a gargantuan data server, that tracked every single vehicle on the road, and also kept track of every single stop light. Every time a stop light changed, it would have to search the position of every single car in the database. It's just not feasible.
Why even bother with dataservers? Just put an RF or microwave transmitter at each intersection. Each transmitter would send out its status (red,yellow,green,etc.) and its location on a reserved frequency every few nanoseconds. Then you could put transmitters along the road every hundred meters or so to transmit the code for the road you are on. Put a GPS and onboard computer in the car (something alot of vehicle manufacturers are already doing) and your vehicle would have the following information: the road it is on, its 2d coordinates on the earth and the direction it is heading. The compuiter compares the heading and position of your vehicle to the location of the transmitter. If your vehicle is on the same road as and within a certain radius of the transmitter (say, 200 meters) and is heading toward it, then you would receive a voice warning like "Prepare to stop at next intersection." (if the status was yellow) or "Stop at next instersection." (if the status was red). You could even have a countdown that told you "Stop in 5,4,3,2,1.." etc.
In fact, you wouldn't even need a GPS if each transmitter along the road transmitted it's location as well. Then your onboard computer would know "I am on this road, at approximately this location (extrapolated from position of last transmitter and heading and speed of vehicle, which it would, of course, also know) traveling in this direction (you would still need an onboard compass)". Then when it got a signal from a "stop light" transmitter, it would compare its current location and heading as described above.
I don't know about the cost effectiveness of all this, but I think it would work.
LED arrays are gradually replacing incandescent lamps in traffic lights (at least in my area anyway) so this opens up a few possibilities. As launch-time ;-) approaches have the red signal flash rapidly several times to get everyone's attention, then have it's LED array give a numeric countdown of the last five seconds to green.