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This Traffic Light Is Always Green
Now here’s a creative design that is not only Green, but also cost-effective. Solar Traffic Light has been designed to include Discolor LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology, essentially hosting all the three colors of the lights within a single unit. Red, Amber and Green all together! The lights source power from the Solar Panel on top of the unit, which is elegantly designed as a hood. Quite Brilliant!
Designers: Cheng-Tsung Feng, Yao-Chieh Lin & Bo-Jin Wang
30 Comments »
John Almond says
What were you going to do about the red/green colour blind population of the world who rely on positional information to know the status of the lights? This very old idea was abandoned over 30 years ago for exactly this reason.
Armin says
Agreed, although I still like the idea very much (’cuz it’s square
).
You could solve the colorblind issue by assigning shapes to colors (similar to pedestrian lights), like they have in Halifax.
It would also be neat to display the time left, by disabling certain LED’s to display the number.
Jose says
Folks the problem for the colorblind/blind people is also covered in the design. Each light has a different shape and color:
Green = Rounded circle (O)
Yellow = Triangle (A)
Red = Cross (X)
This design is really good and has a Reddot award. Nice Job Yao&Co!
Jose.
Canastrophy says
Soooo, it is neither made for the sight impaired nor really practical, and gets an award?
I guess Reality isn’t a category at Reddot.
Carl says
grasping at straws
Lamah says
IMO a safety-critical system like this could never rely on having a string of unbroken sunny days to continue operating.
mif991 says
I agree with Mr. Almond. The color blind issue kills this idea.
genezix says
Not necessarily. Look closely at the third picture. The green light is an open ring. The red is probably a solid circle, and the amber something else, perhaps an X. That makes it very obvious what is what.
Pablo says
It’s green but not good. They totally ignored color blind people. Research? Ops!
tudza says
Can’t see why this system wouldn’t work out well enough. You need:
1) Outside power source as a backup to solar charging.
2) Color and shape differences for stop, caution, and go
Laurence Cook says
I work in the street furniture industrty in the UK and this looks like a nice product, however; the solar cells are too small to power the LEDS, would need to at least double the size.
OK, so Traffic lights are mostly used in urban area, what happens when the panel is in the shade at certain times of day? This can cause a reduction in efficiency of up to 90% so then you are back to using you grid source. When you add it all up this product would probably have a buy back period of over 20 years and more energy would be used to have it in place rather than leave the traffic lights alone.
Along with the colour issues others have identified I cannot see any commercial merit in the prouduct.
Murat says
Does it realy mather seriusly if u can cut 30-50% of the used power a year then u already did alot for the inviroment, u will offcorse need external power at night
I still love this idea and should be considered by many countries tht can efford it
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