Imagining a World Without Traffic Lights

Getting stuck in traffic, like death and taxes, is just part life for people who drive vehicles to get from point A to B. Traffic jams are the result of competition for a scarce and highly valuable resource — the open road, and by extension, our freedom to travel where and when we want. Our traffic woes are compounded, however, by human fallibility. Drivers are often reckless, distracted or overly cautious, and each small mistake on the road propagates throughout the whole system. With the era of driverless cars fast approaching, human incompetence may be removed from the driving equation entirely, according to new research from scientists at MIT. Instead of racing to beat yellow lights, or bemoaning an excruciatingly stale red light, they've shown that a centrally-controlled system in constant communication with every car on the road could synchronize the flow of traffic to optimize travel times and send us racing fearlessly through four-way intersections. In other words, traffic lights may someday go the way of pay phones — urban relics that remind us of simpler times.