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HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. (Gray News) – Three men in Florida have been charged after attempting to steal traffic lights using a saw, officials said. According to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, a detective was driving home around 1 a.m. Tuesday when he noticed a suspicious van stopped at an intersection with its headlights turned off. The detective then noticed sparks coming from the area where traffic lights were in the process of being installed. Additional deputies arrived at the scene, where they said they found three men using a saw to cut the traffic lights off the poles. By the...

MARYSVILLE, Wash. — We're taking a look at the worst of the worst traffic spots in western Washington – and some of the solutions to the problem. Marysville A problem spot in Marysville has city and state transportation officials working to come up with a fix. Interstate 5 traffic between Everett and Marysville gets congested during rush hour. According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, between 1980 and 2017, the population of Snohomish County increased 137%. It's expected to gain another 200,000 residents by 2035. This explosive growth increased the number of vehicles using I-5 between Everett and Marysville,...

Hat Tip: karinsue 1 I was sitting at a long stop light yesterday, thinking about what I would do to keep busy during retirement, minding my own business and patiently waiting for the light to turn green, even though there was no on-coming traffic. An old Nissan full of bearded, young, loud Muslims, shouting Anti-American slogans, with a half-burned American Flag duct-taped on the trunk of their car and a "Remember 9-11" slogan spray painted on the side, stopped next to me. Suddenly they yelled, "Allah Akbar! Praise Allah! Death to America" and took off before the light changed. Out...

Drivers in 14 state highway corridors in Maryland will see their travel times cut over the next year as a result of a $50 million upgrade to traffic signals, Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday. The new system, billed as the second phase of Hogan’s program to relieve highway traffic congestion, will use artificial intelligence to better synchronize signals and improve traffic flow, officials said. The governor said the adaptive signal control system replaces technology that is more than 20 years old. “Nearly 700,000 Marylanders will benefit every day from these transformational improvements,” Hogan said during a news conference at the...

A posh Stockholm neighborhood will soon see its traffic lights receive a facelift as the standard lone figure on the crossing signals is replaced by same-sex couples. Forty-eight of the new lights will be temporarily installed in the Östermalm district to mark Stockholm Pride from July 31st to August 6th, in an initiative by the City of Stockholm. […] The lights will be situated around the Pride Park, which this year is located near the Stockholm Olympic Stadium in Östermalm. So far, reactions to the initiative have been “generally very positive,” [deputy mayor Daniel] Helldén said, with comments praising the...

Day-trippers and tourists complained they don’t know which way to turn while crossing streets in central London after being confronted by a series of arrows pointing in different directions. Around 50 sets of traffic lights near busy Trafalgar Square had their “walk” and “green man” images replaced with the new designs in June to coincide with an annual Gay Pride Festival.

Few nations in the world take red traffic lights more seriously than Germany.Foreign visitors frequently wonder why crowds of Germans wait for traffic lights to turn green when there are no cars in sight.That is why officials in the city of Augsburg became concerned when they noticed a new phenomenon: Pedestrians were so busy looking at their smartphones that they were ignoring traffic lights.The city has attempted to solve that problem by installing new traffic lights embedded in the pavement — so that pedestrians constantly looking down at their phones won't miss them. "It creates a whole new level of...

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Gay-themed traffic lights are getting Vienna into the mood for the annual Eurovision Song Contest, one of the world's most popular kitsch cultural events which this year is being hosted by the Austrian capital. Dozens of traffic lights in central Vienna have been programmed to show male or female gay couples with hearts -- in red for stop and green for go -- replacing the usual single, gender-neutral figure.

The right-wing Freedom party (FPÖ) has announced it is lodging a criminal complaint against Vienna council member Maria Vassilakou, after new pedestrian crossing lights which depict straight, gay and lesbian couples have been introduced around the city.

Bots are being used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Well, I guess we can file this story under the “Didn’t see that coming” category: Two new robot cops have been put in place along the intersection of Boulevard Triomphal and Huileries Avenue in Kinshasa, part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the sole purpose of easing traffic congestion. The two gigantic bots are solar-powered, and were designed by engineers from the Kinshasa Higher Institute of Applied Technique. A bit funny looking in the sense that they look like they’re from a long-lost science fiction flick, the...

Suppose on some sunny afternoon in a large city somewhere in the western world, a man discovers on awaking from a two-hour nap that several hundred car accidents had occurred in the city while he slept. He wonders why. First he considers the possibility that the weather was the cause, but the gorgeous afternoon sun pushes that thought aside. The odds of many hundreds of cars having simultaneous mechanical problems seems infinitesimally small, so he rules that out as well. He ponders the question further and eventually asks himself whether the drivers in that fair city just had a...

Members of Indiana General Assembly leadership introduce legislation promoting photo enforcement. The residents of six cities with a combined population of over 2.7 million voted last year to outlaw the use of automated ticketing machines on their streets. The photo enforcement industry is now working overtime to make up for lost ground by expanding operations into states where neither red light cameras nor speed cameras have been well received. Lobbyists are hopeful that Indiana could be the next state to reconsider. Powerful members of the General Assembly earlier this month introduced legislation to authorize the use of traffic cameras. House...

LED Lights Don't Melt Snow on Traffic Lights, Hiding Signals From DriversA huge swath of the country is getting snow and it's raised an unusual and potentially dangerous problem for motorists. Communities across the country are converting to LED traffic lights, but these lights don't emit heat, so snow doesn't melt like it would with a regular incandescent bulb. In some cases, Drivers then can't see the signals. During a snow storm last year, Lisa Richter of Oswego, Ill., had a green light and was turning left. But police say a driver in the oncoming lane blew through his red...

MILWAUKEE – Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don't burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death. "I've never had to put up with this in the past," said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn't see the lights. "The police officer told me the new lights weren't melting the snow. How is that safe?" Many communities have switched to LED...

Creeping along from red light to red light on your way from a major sports event or concert, or stopped by every red light on the way home late at night, on empty roads, you've probably wondered why traffic lights in the U.S. aren't a little more adaptable. The short answer: they're not at all smart, and at least here in the U.S. they're horribly outdated. The typical U.S. traffic signaling system is (sorry, fellow GenXers) 30 to 40 years old. And the result of these inflexible geezers signaling traffic is a lot of needless idling and the lack of...

The Texas Department of Transportation is installing traffic signals designed to increase congestion and drive toll road traffic. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is using traffic signals to create the level of frustration to a point where the public is forced to accept toll roads. Earlier this month in Austin, TxDOT added an extra traffic signal on State Highway 71 to coincide with the opening of the third segment of the State Highway 130 toll road. Residents interviewed by News 8 Austin complained that the change made already bad traffic much worse on nearby free roads. "At its worst...

Traffic lights in Sydney, Australia were modified to create gridlock forcing frustrated motorists into a controversial toll tunnel. Testimony yesterday in a New South Wales, Australia parliamentary inquiry into the Cross City Tunnel uncovered evidence of significant engineering alterations made in an attempt to force motorists onto the toll road. Opposition leader Peter Debnam charged the Labor government with adjusting signals at 400 intersections along Williams Street and other nearby roads in such a way as to create additional gridlock. In January, Debnam's formal Freedom of Information request for full data on traffic light timing changes was rejected on the...