Experiment: Town in England Turns Off Traffic Lights. Surprising Results. (Video)

This is so good!



Any questions?

cool

what happens? I can't watch youtube at work. My guess is it's the same as when there is a blackout, everyone takes turns and is civil

reply to post by TrueAmerican


This is how traffic normally operates in a 3rd world country with limited to no traffic lights - except the main difference here is that these fortunate UK citizens all went through proper driver training beforehand....which from what I can see in the video makes a HUGE difference in a no-lights scenario.

Cool video!

Originally posted by Electric Crown
what happens? I can't watch youtube at work. My guess is it's the same as when there is a blackout, everyone takes turns and is civil

Hey! No spoilers! Send it to your home email addy and watch later, you''ll love it!

The point about driving, is the aim is not to hit anyone else, if you are a careful driver and aware of the cars around you it is quite simple as long as people are curtious. There are places where lights are needed, but in highly congested areas like the one in the OP I think maybe humans can be relied upon to make this idea work.

On a personal note I'm quite an indecisive driver and may struggle without the lights, but im sure id get used to it.

That was pleasant to watch. I was a bit surprised by the results. I would expect that type of "motor-morals" on small roads and intersections, but not in a high traffic area!

I wonder if this is indication that a world without any rules at all would be a better place. Kind of something to think about. Thanks for posting.

dvancing the right of all road-users to use commonsense on roads free of vexatious traffic controls logo 2 Would our roads be safer and less congested if we were free of traffic lights and free to filter? A body of evidence suggests they would. With journey times at an all-time high, and 30,000 killed or hurt on our roads every year, the current system is plainly unfit. We complain about the traffic and blame other drivers, but could it be traffic controls that are the problem? Traffic lights take our eyes off the road, a recipe for danger. They make us stop when it's safe to go, a recipe for rage. They cost the earth to install and run. But when lights are out of action and there is no priority, we approach carefully and filter in turn (FiT). As courtesy thrives, congestion dissolves.

FITROADS WEBSITE

i remember this being done were i live a few years back,and i remember the local paper saying it was a great success,common sense always works,i like the way it nearly completely cut traffic accidents,dont know why my local area never adopted this,i will try and research it more,

I love it !

The road system running on boundless empathy.

we rely on rules too much, they take away our responsibility to be empathetic in these situations.

Is it any wonder we have Road Rage problems!

I hate to ruin this for you guys but if there weren't any traffic lights in England we would soon get used to it and start being selfish crazy drivers as per usual.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Isn't it amazing what happens when you let citizens think for themselves, and give them a chance to act responsibly with autonomy.

Big Brother won't like this at all.
S & F.

Originally posted by jexmo
I hate to ruin this for you guys but if there weren't any traffic lights in England we would soon get used to it and start being selfish crazy drivers as per usual.

But that video just proved you dead wrong!

I've seen motorists give way to other traffic myself when the traffic lights have been broken down, so yes this scenario happens for real quite often in uk towns.

I wonder if this experiment would have been so successful if it had taken place in rush-hour London or any other city centre?

A city centre in rush hour would be a proper experiment-tester

contrast that with this one:

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Read what I posted properly, it always courteous at first over here and then people get the hump and get selfish.
That was a, 'nicer' part of the country, i can garuntee maidstone and london city would not be like that. Are we all forgetting why traffic lights were implemented in the first place... BECAUSE WE NEEDED THEM!! when it gets busy, it gets selfish.

This isn't really refreshing in my opinion. The usual procedure is that a crossing does not have traffic lights until it becomes too busy. So there is an enormous amount of before/after data available. I can't imagine that in all those situations it made traffic worse. In some specific situations absence of light may work well indeed, a roundabout would even be better. But it may be good more study is done where lights work and where not.

I think this was a brilliant experiment. I love the fact that it was a severl month thing and not a single day thing. You have to give drivers time to adjust.

Personally, I think the single largest motivator in behaving at these crossings is the idea that people don't want their cars or themselves damaged. With the traffic light system, everyone just tries to race through and beat the red light. That is what causes accidents. If there are no red lights to beat and you KNOW that there will be cars there to deal with, there's no sense in racing through.

Aww, I read the title wrong. I was hoping to see a town that turned all it's lights out and then all the people, thousands of them, went outside to look at the sky and they saw the milky way in all it's glory for the first time.

reply to post by wigit


oi. I wish Dallas would do that. I have never seen the milky way. Although, we don't have enough police to handle the crime from even a single night of blackout.

Hi, I joined ATS so I could enter the discussion about the traffic lights-off experiment, or trial. I'm the guy who instigated and documented it. It was to illustrate my case that humans are supremely capable of negotiating safe movement when left to their own co-operative devices. Fortunately, Portishead councillors were open to the idea. The video posted here is really Part 2 of a longer piece - I had to split it to get it on to YouTube. You might be interested in Part 1, which explains the rationale. Both videos are linked from the photos on my website, FiT Roads. A couple of replies to comments so far:
jexmo - the trial survived novelty effect; it began on 14 September 2009, and has gone permanent after journey times fell by over half with no loss of safety.
atlasastro - (among others) you get it.
doobydoll - for two uncontrolled London junctions see Part 1 of the video at FiT Roads
toreishi - Tehran traffic - hair-raising, but there is (spontaneous) order in chaos. Our conflict-avoidance and conflict-resolution skills are highly evolved. I'm not necessarily advocating scrapping 24-hour controls at major junctions like this, although it does show that people can scrape through unscathed ...Given a programme of re-education and public awareness, it's possible that even multi-lane junctions could work safely and efficiently using a sociable filter-in-turn type "system" as distinct from a regimented, controlled one. Basically I would use (part-time) control only as a last resort. In the UK, for decades, traffic control has been imposed as an expensive, counterproductive first resort, and that's one of the idiocies I'm challenging.
TrueAmerican - precisely (video proved jexmo wrong).
rogerstigers - spot on. Survival instinct and social custom see to it that in the absence of priority and signal control, we approach carefully and filter (more or less) in turn. The desire not to hurt or be hurt ensures slow approach speeds. "Get out of my way!" becomes "After you!" Incidentally I have just started a cause on Facebook, called Roads FiT for People.