Smart technologies for traffic are a delicately woven web of processes that help transport personnel, drivers, and commuters control the flow and efficiency of traffic. Intelligent traffic systems can alter control mechanisms such as traffic lights and freeway onramp meters as well as bus rapid transit lanes. They also employ advanced IoT hardware and routers, cellular technology and mobile networks. They can also help forecast shifts in traffic demand, and offer a variety of real-time information to road users.
An excellent example is the adaptive traffic signal system in Pittsburgh. When Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Stephen Smith installed his first couple of traffic signals, which were merely experimental, in a crowded area of the city’s East Liberty, he saw immediate results. Drivers drove 25 percent faster and spent 40 percent less time idling in traffic jams than they had before.
The system works by collecting data from sensors that monitor the traffic coming successful ai tools for business to test now in and then adjusting their timing on the fly in addition to detecting pedestrians in intersections and giving them enough time to traverse the street. Sensors then send their raw data to a central hub, where it’s processed by artificial intelligence and then dispatched back out to the intersections using 5G-enabled mobile networks.
These systems are intelligent and allow for better and more accurate simulation of scenarios that minimize the risk that human traffic managers cannot do. All this in real-time. This is an important step toward Vision Zero, a goal of safe and secure driving in which both vehicles and humans share the road without collisions.
