A small town is piloting an experimental traffic light control system aimed at improving emergency vehicle response times. To help emergency vehicle drivers pass traffic lights more quickly, devices have been installed on traffic lights as well as embedded in the town’s emergency vehicle navigation systems (police, fire & ambulance). The traffic light devices use Radio Frequency (RF) signals sent from the in-car devices to identify each vehicle. When authorised in-car devices are manually triggered, those traffic lights within range which govern the vehicle’s forward motion are signalled to, as quickly as possible, safely switch to green.

Rather than triggering traffic lights manually via emergency vehicle consoles, an alternative proposal suggests traffic lights should instead be controlled by a centralised computer dispatch system.

In an effort to better understand traffic flows in the city, the control devices installed on traffic lights were upgraded to include CCTV cameras.