Are we signalling safely (traffic control signals)

With ever increasing constraints on new road building, particularly within the urban environment, the efficient management of the existing road network is becoming more and more important. It could be argued that the most significant contribution to efficient road management has come from traffic signals. With the development of microprocessors and integrated circuits has come a whole range of new and increasingly sophisticated signalling techniques. The wide-spread adoption of these new techniques indicates a degree of consensus regarding their success at managing the road system efficiently, but what about their impact on safety. Clearly, safety and signals must be interlinked if only by means of geography. The paper looks at the implications of signals on safety and poses the question 'are we signalling safely?' In doing so, consideration is given to various signalling techniques and what is known about their safety benefits and disbenefits. >