By: Nick Gambino
If you’re anything like me or the endless other drivers on the road, you’ve got a particular pet peeve with regards to red lights slowing you down. I hate the feeling of barreling down the road, making good time to whatever destination I’m headed and suddenly having to stop. I especially hate when you get a series of red lights one after the other. It’s like there’s some hidden wizard of traffic lights bent on screwing up my day.
Audi developed the Traffic Light Information system (TLI) in 2016 for people like me. TLI provides information like how much time you have until the upcoming light turns red, as well as a countdown to it turning green again. The system works with select smart traffic lights in major metro areas like Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. The lights send information over 4G LTE to the car, which then interprets the data. They’ve now upped their game with their Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA).
GLOSA informs you of the optimal speed to drive to hit lights at just the right time. By following the advised speed limit, you have the best chance to hit green lights and avoid reds. The way it works is your car does some quick math based on data like how much distance between the car and the light, the local speed limit and the timing of upcoming traffic signals. All of this is then neatly packaged into a recommended speed limit.
TLI and the new GLOSA are available on select AUDIs from 2017 on, and as I stated earlier, it’s only available in select major cities. So, it’s a bit limited at the moment but if it continues to prove successful, we’ll hopefully see a bigger rollout in the near future.
“Not only do vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies like GLOSA benefit drivers today, they’re also the critical steps needed as we continue toward an automated future,” President Audi of America, Mark Del Rosso, said in a statement.
That indicates Audi, unsurprisingly, has a few other tricks up their sleeves and plans to continue to create innovative automated systems for their vehicles. While the traffic light hater in me is thrilled, I feel an attentive reviewing of the Terminator and Matrix films might also be a good idea.
