[mrandish]

While the potential of super-smart AI to improve transport efficiency, costs and environmental impact with self-driving is obvious, it's also expensive and still many years from being ready for broad deployment. It's puzzling that low-hanging fruit like an AI-assisted "Slightly Smarter" traffic light is ignored. It could deliver meaningful improvement today with cheap, easy to retrofit, Raspberry Pi-level tech which already works well enough for a simple, limited use case like reducing unnecessary idling at traffic lights.

[jerezzprime]

For this situation, and similar ones, there are simple solutions. For example, in this situation, the timer should always be running (and resets when the light changes). When a car triggers the sensor, the light should change if the timer is > N. If the timer is not there yet, wait until timer is N.

No AI required, just basic thoughtfulness and requirements gathering.

[WalterBright]

The trouble with the street sensors is that your car has to come to a stop before it is detected. Stopping and starting cars consumes a great deal of gasoline.

Contrast it with the flow achieved when there's a traffic cop managing an intersection. It's an enormous improvement.