[ajmurmann]

The lack of adoption of best practices from other countries is generally baffling to me. When I first visited China grim Europe and saw traffic lights with countdowns (like in the US) I thought we did immediately adopt this in Europe. Cultural inertia and lack of looking outwards is really frustrating.

[Tarq0n]

Research on countdown traffic lights is inconclusive with regards to their safety [0]. They can not realistically be described as best practice.

[0] https://www.maxapress.com/data/article/dts/preview/pdf/DTS-2...

[CalRobert]

A countdown on a traffic signal seems like a fun way to encourage drag racing.

Though it's nice on pedestrian signals.

[amalcon]

The driver can usually see the countdown on the pedestrian signal anyway. It's not obvious that this would be worse.

[gpm]

Crazy idea that would be next to politically impossible in North America: Have every traffic light with a countdown also be a speed camera.

It'd eliminate the incentive to drag race, would give drivers more information earlier allowing better driving, and would generally make speeds limits actually a limit on roads with traffic lights.

[s1artibartfast]

First you have to deal with the issue of cities selling camera data to third parties and using it for license plate tracking and face ID

[gpm]

That's a solved problem in responsible cities, say New York. The cameras only take a picture if they see someone speeding [1], and once they see someone speeding a citation is issued and that's a matter of public record [2] so there is no data to sell.

But like I said, politically impossible, there's a very strong constituency and lobby of people who like cars and like speeding and will come up with excuses for why it couldn't work. For instance New York State restricts New York City to only putting speed cameras in school zones because of that group of people.

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/speed-camera-faq....

[2] https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Open-Parking-a...

[RandomBacon]

Is it a countdown until it turns green, or a countdown until it turns red? I think it's unlikely the latter would encourage drag racing.

[ajmurmann]

I'd like to see both so that I can avoid coming to a full stop when it's red and on the other side of it avoid having to slam on the breaks.

[HPsquared]

Another example of "this is why we can't have nice things".

[iggldiggl]

Countdown signals don't work with adaptive signalling where phases are dynamically lengthened or shortened (or sometimes entirely skipped) in response to traffic flows. They especially don't work with public transport priority.

[Kuinox]

How are countdown signal better ?

[ajmurmann]

I know if I still have time to try to cross or not. Especially on wider roads it's nice not to have to worry about being in the middle when it goes red.