In effort to go green, has safety been compromised?
December 21, 2009 by Fred HosierPosted in: Fatality, In this week's e-newsletter, Injuries, Latest News & Views, Transportation safety
Here’s a warning you can give to your company’s drivers: Beware snow-covered traffic signals. They’re a new problem due to energy-efficiency efforts.
Many traffic lights now use LED bulbs instead of incandescent ones. Reason: The LEDs are 80% to 90% more energy-efficient.
And that energy efficiency is the problem. The energy wasted by incandescent bulbs was heat. But in winter storms, that heat was melting snow that accumulated on the lights.
The LEDs don’t generate enough heat to melt snow, and that’s been blamed for one traffic fatality and dozens of other collisions and injuries.
In a storm in Illinois last April, 34-year-old Lisa Richter had a green light and entered an intersection. A driver coming from the opposite direction couldn’t see the red light that was obscured by snow and plowed into Richter’s car, killing her.
The snow doesn’t stick to the lights in every storm. The snow has to be wet and the wind blowing in the right direction to obscure the LED lights.
When motorists have called in about lights obscured by snow, crews have had to manually clear them off. In some places they blow the snow off using compressed air.
Several solutions are being tried, such as using heating elements like those in airport runway lights, installing weather shields or coating the lights with water-repellent substances.
Your company drivers probably know that when a traffic light isn’t working because of a power outage, they should treat the intersection as a four-way stop. The same goes if the lights are obscured by snow. They should stop before entering the intersection.
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Tags: green, LEDs, traffic accidents, traffic lights
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December 21st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
It’s interesting how we don’t really consider the ripple effect of decisions like these. What I would like to know is - what is the energy usage of incandescent bulbs vs. manually clearing off snow, including man hours, fuel for municipal vehicles and power for a snowblower or similar device. Even installing a heat source, like those on airport runways, seems like it would compromise energy efficiency.
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
They don’t care about the ripple effect. Al Gore, who consumes 20 times the energy of the normal consumer only cares about his agenda, control, and lining his pockets.
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:43 am
Classic case of curing a problem with a problem (my original quote)…
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Interestingly enough, the heating elements use more energy than the light bulbs they used to use so in essence they are using more energy in an effort of being green. Nice.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Was it snowing so hard the driver couldn’t tell there were traffic signals at the intersection? If it was they should have been driving slower. If they saw there was a signal and couldn’t see that the signal was red, they couldn’t see if it was green either and should have at leasted slowed down to see what the other traffic was doing at the intersection. I agree there is a problem with the LED lights, but the driver still needs to pay attention to what’s going on around them.
December 30th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Have to agree with Harlan. A good defensive driver would have responded to the impaired conditions and approached, then entered the intersection with all due caution.
July 1st, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Everytime we use those people light bulbs they burn out between 4 days and 3 weeksa€|.
they are so high priced and only last a few hoursa€|the standard light bulbs last so a lot longer and price so a great deal less.