Transportation engineers at North Carolina State University are now proposing a “white light,” which would enable autonomous vehicles to help control traffic flow and let human drivers know what’s going on.
At a traffic light, Red means “stop”, Yellow means “slow down” and Green means “go” and the researchers introducing a white light as a fourth colour to traffic signals so that autonomous vehicles can help manage traffic flow.
During this phase of traffic flow, the traffic lights will be changed to white. This will let drivers of non-autonomous cars know that right-of-way is being dictated by AV traffic, and that all they need to do is simply follow the car in front of them – if it stops, they stop, and if it goes through the intersection, so do they.
According to a series of computer simulations conducted by the study’s authors that the addition of this fourth white light reduced fuel usage and increased travel time through intersections.
However, The researchers first introduced a “white phase” traffic intersection concept in 2020.
