You know those new brighter, greener traffic lights that we have been seeing in the streets lately? It turns out that they have a fatal flaw.

 

These newer traffic lights have LED bulbs rather than traditional light bulbs. While this makes the lights more visible due to the fact that they are brighter, and better for the environment because they use less energy than old lights, there is an oversight in their design that can lead to death: the LED bulbs do not get hot enough to melt away any snow that builds up over the lights.

 

In April of 2009, a driver in a pickup truck sped past a red light in a suburb of Oswego, NY that was covered in snow at an intersection and hit a woman who was turning left in her car. The woman was tragically killed and four people were injured in the accident, which leads us to the question of avoiding the next incident.

 

Never mind that the driver of the pickup truck should have had some common sense. One of the first things you learn in Drivers Ed is that when a light is out, you treat it like a stop sign, and come to a full stop, not go speeding blindly through the intersection.

 

One of the solutions that transportation officials are currently trying is sending out workers with brooms to clear off the lenses. This just seems very labor, time, and money intensive and not to mention dangerous for those workers standing in the middle of intersections.

 

Another solution is the implementation of sloping snow shields that would make it harder for snow to stick to the lights and potentially obscure them.

 

LED lights use much less energy than conventional light bulbs and as a result, save countless amounts of money. Local governments have weighed their options and came out with a result: the benefits from the use of LED lamps greatly outweigh the cost of manpower, or in some cases, danger to human lives.

Source: The New York Times