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Around the mid-2000’s, the LED traffic light began making its way onto the scene. Recent developments in LED technology meant that energy efficient replacements for the standard incandescent lamp were beginning to appear. Municipalities rejoiced with the energy savings they provided, but in cold climates they weren’t met with quite as warm a welcome. Not producing sufficient heat to melt snow on their lenses, some drivers became confused by ambiguous signals and caused fatal accidents.
This video tells the tale of why this newfound “problem” generated harsh criticism to the new technology, and explains why this reaction is entirely dumb and regressive.
Watch me take apart one of these traffic light modules here:
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The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of "But Sometimes!"
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The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of "But Sometimes!"
technology connections
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People are stupid, this comment on general society won you a like for this one.
2:34 damn that thing is massive
3 years late to this conversation, but wasn't one of the lenses considered poisonous? I believe it was green. I wonder if they still are or actually ever were.
the city where I live at is constantly replacing the LED red one's yellow and green ones they malfunction they flicker quit working like a partial red partial green or nearly quit working altogether
"But sometimes…". Image that you're 3 moves into a chess game and your opponent looks at the board in despair & retires his king. That describes 90% of the population.
I like how he says "dingus"
First problem: you live in Illinois
6:21
Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to have forgotten this
Last week, a pretty urban area near my college had its traffic lights all out at the same time
And of the 100s of people driving, I was the only one treating all the intersection as 4-way stops, and I almost got rear-ended and yelled at a couple of times for doing so
Holy crap is that why there's a folded stop sign?? I always wondered why those were there..
This video is over 3 years old so I hope you still get a notification of a comment….
As someone who LOVES your late 70s/early 90s aesthetic about everything, I NEED to know what that shirt is about. Google finds nothing so I assume it's an inside joke, but it's killing me not knowing. Also, is that an 84 Corolla on it?
The incandescent bulbs are 180 watts. The cost of the bulb plus the labor to replace them is less than the cost to run an incandescent light for a year.
Folded up stopsign? Why fold it? We have signs on every single intersection where I live (Eastern Europe, Bulgaria) even if there are traffic lights in case they malfunction, or get turned off during the night and every driver knows to follow the traffic lights,if they dont work the signs, and if there isnt any signs treat every intersection with a "stop and try your best not to hit anything mentality"
Ooooh yes, "but sometimes". I blame the fifties. I'll explain why in a minute. Whenever I see people argue that their one friend had a bad reaction to a food or medical treatment they tell everyone not to take it. It becomes a dogma based on ONE observation. Everyone should learn a little about statistics and how large pools of observations need to be to reliably make statements of correlations etc.
When I hear people find something "bad" about that new computer thing, or doing something electronically, or relying on machines where back in the day we had people, I always see the fifties (and people that grew up then, resenting how the world has changed) and everything they stand for. Conservative, opposed to change, thinking they had the world figured out when playing with nuclear bombs, and relying on what another person said rather than looking at science. There was such a lack of questioning things. It was that world when you would tell the Mrs. her husband's bank account status because you recognised her face and it would be impolite not to provide that service while information technology has had people think up proper rules that a machine (= a non-intelligent entity) could follow: A person enters the bank. Ask for their account card or identification and authorisation.
Vulcans would be frustrated at how slowly logic finds its way to the understanding and assessment of everyday situations.
Not to sound snobby, but over here (Germany) I don't see the old incandescent bulbs fail very often. Ooooor… maybe they are a special flavour of incandescent technology?
"Think of the solution, not the problem" ~Terry Goodkind
Critical thinking skills are on the same path as common sense.
3 years later the "but sometimes" now also applies to electric cars "BUT THEY CATCH ON FIRE!" oh ffs.
But sometimes is a problem because municipalities want to avoid lawsuits. Unfortunately our legal system generally sides with the idiot. So it's not really "but sometimes". It's "but lawyers".
The part complaining about the "it dosent melt snow and ice off the lights" is a bit out of touch I think. There are places up north here in Canada or in Alaska where almost half of the year is covered in Snow and where ice builds up on everything. I get this isnt a concern for most of the US and Canada but it very well is of concern here. We can't just always start treating traffic lights like stop signs, we might as well justp ut stop signs down because it is is affecting us for half of the year. The new defrosting LED lights are pretty clever though.
Great video. You speak of the most rare element in the universe….common sense.
I mean, it can be like 40x as much power in winter, and still be more efficient
Almost all traffic lights in Russia are LED. I have never seen a fully snowed traffic light, even when they have no visors at all.
I live in Canada, and I see pretty much only LED lights and I have NEVER seen a traffic light iced over, and I have seen some pretty intense blizzards.
I’ve never driven a day in my life, but I would think it’s simple common sense to stop at a light you can’t read.
The possible outcomes are:
Go, and
1) be fine
2) run a red light, which is dangerous
Stop, and
3) be fine, though you might’ve wasted your time
4) be fine
logically the safer gamble is to stop, as the only actually BAD outcome is a result of just blindly pushing forward.
Don't think I've ever seen a broken traffic light in Germany that's broken because a lamp burned out.
I was never taught that if a traffic light goes out, to use it like a four way stop sign. If I was taught that, it wasn't drilled enough for me to retain it. I find that sad because I could've been one of the idiots dying because I didn't know that
In some places though it is not just a "sometimes" thing. I live in Winnipeg in Canada and winter and snow is essentially half the year…literally. That is not an exaggeration. And the city here adopted LEDs early and then had to have fun jury rigging a heating system into the housing because they didn't have time to wait for GE to invent a new fancy version of the bulb. So there is definitely issues with early adoption.
This was wonderful. Thank you!
Sooo, u kept it, nice.
Oh come on. You being sensible again?
Its weird that in your other video you show the led light made up of only about 8 x 1 watt leds, here in spain the entire light is made up of about 80 plus leds as you can see individual leds burn out over about 2 years and then they start rapidly to fail completely but for several months you have sections of the light missing.
I am sure in the northern states or where snow is a normal occurrence you would need heated light options.
We could simply add a detector that activate a heating ring around the front of the lamp.
You know this "but sometimes" topics is normally caused by garbage we call "journalist"? You expect to much from them when you want them to be open for optimizations after a paradigm chance. They had to understand the topic to be understanding, which they are not capable of. Otherwise thes wouldn't be useless sensationalsm reporter
"people are stupid, accidents happen" … Truth