Experts believe that the survival rates of road accident victims can be improved by up to 40% if treatment is delivered just four minutes faster than the average. Hence the idea of Ford which began experimenting with a technology for “smart traffic lights” that turn green when emergency vehicles pass.
Called Connected Traffic Light Technology, this technology exploits the connectivity between vehicles and infrastructures to communicate with traffic lights, with the aim of facilitating the transit of ambulances, fire trucks and law enforcement vehicles. Not only that, being intelligent, the system would also be able to help reduce the risk of an accident caused by first responders if they are forced to go through the red light at full speed.
And the numbers speak for themselves: in London, ambulances are involved in six accidents a day and 2,265 in the year. Not only that: in Germany, 39% of ambulance accidents at intersections occurred when a traffic light signaled red for the ambulance.
But how does the system work? “The technology – explain the German engineers – was tested by the Blue Oval on a road with eight consecutive traffic lights in Aachen, Germany, and two sections with three consecutive traffic lights just outside the city, all set up by the project partners. test, a Ford Kuga Plug-In Hybrid, equipped with an on-board unit (to communicate with the infrastructure) and a hardware for quick check (to connect to the software prototype in the vehicle), performed, depending on the different test scenarios, alternatively as an ambulance and a passenger vehicle “.
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Then the test vehicle signaled at the traffic lights to turn green. Once the car crossed the intersection, the traffic light returned to its standard operation. And here Ford’s Adaptive Cruise Control technology adapted the speed of the car to help ensure the light was green as more cars passed. At a red light, the speed of the vehicle was reduced well before the intersection, for example from 50 km / h to 30 km / h, in order to time the approach and allow the car to arrive at the traffic light when the green light was activated.
Everything is based on the communication between vehicles and traffic lights that is enabled by C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) technology, a unified platform that connects vehicles to the road infrastructure, to other vehicles and to other road users. Dialogue, as we know, always helps.
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