this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
267 points (96.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

15754 readers
1283 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
toaster@slrpnk.net
grue@lemmy.world
Toaster1@lemmy.world
267
Overtaking and going fast in urban areas is not only dangerous, but also useless: a mathematical demonstration (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by lgsp@feddit.it to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
61 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Those who use the bike know this very well: in the city, speeding motorists overtaking other cars, only get one thing: they arrive first to the next red.

With a simple model, the author estimated the probability that one car that overtakes another, will then be reached again at a later red light. Then he estimated the probability that the same thing will happen when there are multiple successive traffic lights, as usual in the cities.

The result is that as fast as an aggressive driver goes, the presence of multiple traffic lights makes it virtually certain that a slower driver will catch up

So, if someone aggressively overcomes you, when you reach him at the next traffic light, you can tell him that it is mathematically proven that he/she is an idiot.

In addition, this study has implications for the 30 km/h city, demonstrating how in urban areas the traffic lights determine the travel times, not the maximum speed reachable between one traffic light and the next.

The original scientific article is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/260310/481212/The-Voorhees-law-of-traffic-a-stochastic-model

crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/116419204210303856

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] psud@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Again, making assumptions about what every light will be like. Different places installed different things at different times.

Again?

It's a fair assumption, for the last 70 years electric capacitance sensors (metal detectors) have been a tiny fraction of the cost and complexity of weight sensors. I have never seen a weight sensor at traffic lights in any of the three countries I have driven in. Roads don't last 70 years, weight sensors on roads are lucky to last 20 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light doesn't see fit to mention any sensors other than inductive loop (metal detectors) and the long list of related things on that page don't include alternative sensors, though video sensors do also exist

No way does Germany use anything other than inductive loop detectors, unless they have Netherlands style AI camera systems to change lights before the vehicle arrives

And a search on what technologies Germany uses resulted:

  • Induction loops
  • Cameras

Weight is not included, no surprise to me as it's so expensive to maintain

[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I live in the midwestern US. There you go assuming things again. Although, considering how much sanity and common-sense have anything to do with the decision-making of the powers-that-be in this brave, beautiful land, you've got me wondering if we're neighbors, or you could be, idk, my mayor?

That said, the traffic light situation in my town seems insane at times, but if I visit the nearest larger cities in any cardinal direction, the streets and traffic alone make me glad to come back home, so I guess you can keep knocking it out of the park and throwing facts of negligible-relavence to me in this thread, Mr. Mayor from Aussie-land.