Traffic light pedestrian: views and photos

The idea of installing a traffic light at street crossings to regulate traffic is owned by the London-based John Peak Knight. By profession, he was a specialist in railway semaphores.

A few historical facts

The first of the traffic lights was designed and installed on London Street in 1868. The signals in it were switched manually by two arrows. Their horizontal position indicated "stop", at an angle of 45 degrees. - permit cautious movement. To distinguish between semaphore signals in the darkness of the night, a gas lamp was used. Rotating, it shone in green or red.

The automatic signal switching system was invented and patented in Chicago in 1910. A couple of years the drivers got acquainted with the first electric traffic light, which has signal lights of the now familiar green and red colors. Ironically, this invention at that time was not patented.

What were the first traffic lights

Little by little the streets of the largest American cities (Cleveland, New York, Detroit) began to acquire traffic lights. Most of them had two signals - red and green, launched by specially assigned policemen, sitting at intersections in glass booths.

Then, in 1920, a yellow signal was used in their designs. In Europe, the first traffic lights were installed in Paris, Hamburg and the cities of England. Constructions with a countdown occurred only in 1998, it happened in France.

In our country, the installation of the first traffic lights occurred at the beginning of the thirties of the last century. The very first was installed in Leningrad at the intersection of the streets, now known as Nevsky and Liteiny Prospekt. It happened in the beginning of 1930. Approximately a year later, the first copy of the traffic light in Moscow, at the crossroads of the Kuznetsky Most and St. Petrovka.

The role of traffic lights for modern transport

Today, traffic on the roads is inconceivable without such a powerful means of planning and organizing it as traffic lights. Their main tasks are to optimize the quality of traffic on the roads and achieve a high level of safety. Traffic light regulation is an important tool in the overall concept of traffic, consisting of activities to optimize the distribution of traffic flows, the safety of pedestrians and cyclists and the use of specific routes by vehicles.

For safety reasons, they are installed in places where the probability of an accident is high, which can only be reduced by a constant-regulation device. And also in cases when other measures (setting prohibitory and speed-limiting signs, the device of unregulated transitions for pedestrians) are not effective enough.

Traffic lights must be installed in places where the rule of priority is often not observed when driving intersections. And also where the movement is characterized by high speed or intensity, with limited visibility and difficulty in determining the rules of priority of travel, with a small capacity of the road section.

Another of their roles

Traffic lights, in addition, perform certain environmental tasks. For example, the so-called green wave is intended to maintain a uniform speed of traffic and reduce the number of stops.

At the same time, less fuel is consumed, exhaust emissions and noise from moving vehicles are reduced. This factor is important in large cities in the streets with intensive traffic. A big role is played by traffic lights also in ensuring the safety of cyclists and pedestrians.

What are they like?

By the form and purpose there are a huge number of models of traffic lights. There are modifications with arrows and without, two or three light signals, installed on the level crossings or bicycle paths. All this is traffic lights. Traffic light pedestrian is arranged exclusively for safe traffic on the carriageway of people.

The most common, widespread types of them - road street. A pedestrian crossing with traffic lights can be found on the road of any country.

How is the traffic light arranged?

As is known, all three traditional colors are used in car designs: green, yellow and red. When the traffic light is vertical, red is always on top, green is on the bottom. With a horizontal arrangement, the left most of it is red, on the right - green. Part of the car is equipped with an additional section.

What is the purpose of the yellow signal? For traffic lights this means the following: the passage for the stop line is allowed, but the speed of the passage to the site, which is regulated by the traffic light, must be necessarily lowered. That is, the driver must be ready to switch traffic lights to red. This signal in a number of designs can be orange.

Types of regulation

Traffic control with traffic lights can also be different. With constant regulation, its mode is not subject to change and does not depend on the time of day or day of the week. Another kind is adaptive. It depends to a certain extent on the amount of traffic flow. In this case, either the sequence, or the number, or the duration of the switching phases of the signals can change.

With other forms of adaptive regulation, all three indicators can change. The regime, called the green wave, is possible only with constant regulation or adaptive with varying duration of the light phases.

And what for people?

Consider now the non-transport - a pedestrian traffic light. They are installed on officially registered pedestrian crossings. As a rule, they are equipped with only two signals - permissive and prohibitive. The appearance of the design for people may differ slightly among themselves. The most famous pedestrian traffic light is in the form of human silhouettes - green (walking) and red (standing).

In other countries, there may be other designations. For example, in the States, a raised hand serves as a red signal. Sometimes instead of a palm or little men you can see the inscriptions "stand" and "go." On the streets of Oslo, the prohibiting signal of a pedestrian traffic light looks like a pair of red figures of human figures standing nearby.

All these complexities mean convenience for people with visual impairments or color blindness, that is, poorly discerning colors. For the same purposes, in most countries, usually the light signals of a pedestrian traffic light are duplicated by sound signals.

Let's talk about its design

What is the construction of a pedestrian traffic light? There are several options. One of them is based on incandescent or halogen lamps. The pedestrian traffic light in this case consists of a lamp with a reflector, a light filter, a Fresnel lens and a protective visor.

Other widely used traffic lights are constructed on the basis of LEDs. They have certain advantages, namely: a brighter color, a lower probability of parasitic light. In addition, they are less prone to destruction - in the event of failure of an individual LED, the rest of the design remains operational.

In addition, the construction of such a traffic light is simpler and consists of an LED matrix, an anti-vandal glass and a visor.

Pedestrian traffic lights Т 7

According to statistics, a quarter of all pedestrian run-offs occur on crossings for them that do not have traffic lights. At dusk and at night, drivers sometimes find it difficult to notice a pedestrian crossing in time. What can be done to improve the security level of unregulated conversions?

The best way to date is to equip these transitions with T7 traffic lights. This LED design is yellow. They can be seen by a driver from afar. And by means of a pulsed LED indication, such a traffic light in the twilight or in the darkness will surely warn the driver about the approach of the pedestrian crossing and the need to reduce the speed. As a result, at the signal of such a pedestrian traffic light, crossing the road is much safer.

Such a traffic light is powered by electricity, the cost of installing it mainly falls on the procedure for laying the cable and the cost of the latter.

Solar-powered traffic lights

Even more effective solution can be the device of a light-emitting diode light, working from a solar battery. The cost of its installation is half that of the cable laying and is in the amount of 40-50 thousand rubles. In addition, there is a significant saving of money on electricity.

A pedestrian traffic light on solar panels these days is the achievement of the most advanced technologies. Installation of such a design does not imply a trench digging, cable connection to the power grid and its protection, electricity payment.

What are the advantages?

Do not know the peer of a set of LED traffic lights and a mini solar power plant. Such a traffic light on a pedestrian crossing can be placed on the road sign itself and will start working immediately after installation. The time of its operation in the autonomous mode is not less than 8 years without any maintenance.

Due to low power consumption, such traffic lights are durable, its battery can work without recharging in the sun for three days.

During daylight the battery is charged from a powerful solar battery. The charging process takes place even in winter or in cloudy weather. Thanks to the built-in full-discharge controller, the battery never occurs.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in Russia there is even a special monument to the traffic light! The sculpture was installed in 2006 on the street of the city of Novosibirsk.