Do traffic lights have the technology to allow emergency vehicles change the lights they e approaching to green?
Yes, this technology does exist, and is used in MANY cities in the US. Currently, the leader in this market is 3M with their Opticom product. This product uses pulses of light to control the traffic signals. The light is mounted to the top of the emergency vehicle and a photo-receiver mounted near the traffic lights senses the pulses and adjusts the lights accordingly. The traffic lights can preprogrammed to repond in many ways, but the standard method is to change all of the lights, in the direction the vehicle is heading to green, making traffic flow and allowingt other drivers to move out of the way. This page provides some good information about Opticom: http://www.tcmfd.com/stuff/opticom.html This is a link to the 3M Opticom site. It’s a long URL, so I don’t know if it will work for everyone. If not, go to 3M’s web site and search for Opticom.
