“Rebel against Red Lights: The Need for Intelligent Traffic Solutions”

In Stefan Slupetzky’s new thriller, “Lemmings Blues” (Haymon), a sinister group of conspirators is at work whose members are all equipped with blue welding goggles. Because they assume that traffic lights have infrared light implanted in them that influences and manipulates people. “Now they are also using the last clean resource to terrorize us: the light,” the chief conspirator swears. If you stare at the red traffic lights, long-wave molecular vibrations “penetrate unhindered into the brain and cause irreversible damage there – especially psychological ones. You don’t even notice it! And yet you become more docile and powerless from day to day, until every drive, every The urge to resist is gone.”

Actually a brilliant idea (which, of course, is quickly exposed as humbug even in the novel with many witty and surprising twists and turns), but which works the other way around for me. When I stare at the red light in traffic lights, I don’t become more docile and listless, but rebellious. Because most of the time their phases last far too long – and neither as a pedestrian nor as a cyclist I don’t want to stand still pointlessly when – as is so often the case – nothing is happening on the crossing streets, i.e. no cars are coming. In times of AI, which knows so much about us and can do things instead of us (caution: ChatGPT has placed one of my colleagues in the right industry biographically, but put it in the Nazi era!), it must be possible to construct intelligent traffic lights , which adapt to the traffic situation in such a way that a rapid flow is achieved.

In Berlin – in contrast to Vienna – I have often noticed that the traffic light phases are generally much shorter, so that everything goes faster for that reason alone (and you are not even tempted to make the crossing). But it’s not Berlin, it’s Hamburg, from which German city the happy traffic light message is now penetrating, or better: a light signal, a glimmer of hope. There, at a traffic light in the Eimsbüttel district, on a much-used walk and school path, the weaker road users now have permanent green – and cars have to request green phases at the push of a button. That seems to work well – and is basically sympathetic and green in every respect, but only part of the solution. As an Austrian, who – according to the Federal Chancellor – comes from a car country, I also have a heart for drivers.

They shouldn’t automatically be the disadvantaged, but there should be a general balance of meaningful things Stop and Go for all road users, without any clear preference. The fact that this can be done with the push of a button alone seems to me to be under-complex (and you know that: you press – and it still takes a miserable long time for the traffic light to change!). In this case, AI would actually appear to me to be a sensible area of ​​application. If necessary, this plan must be transmitted infrared in the manner devised by Slupetzky and solidified in the brains of the traffic planners.