At a traffic light, red means stop and green means go. But 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. In computational simulations, the new approach significantly improves travel time through intersections and reduces fuel consumption.
“This concept we’re proposing for traffic intersections, which we call a ‘white phase,’ taps into the computing power of autonomous vehicles (AVs) themselves,” says Ali Hajbabaie, corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. “The white phase concept also incorporates a new traffic signal, so that human drivers know what they are supposed to do. Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them.” …
