A New Color Could Be Added To Minnesota Traffic Lights

Red, yellow, and green have been used for 100 years at intersections. About 10 years ago they threw the flashing yellow arrow at us Minnesota drivers to keep us on our feet. (That means you can take a left turn if no traffic is coming.)

A new color could be added to traffic lights in the future, and it's been talked about for the last couple of years.

This isn't just a Minnesota thing either, it could be happening everywhere in the coming years. It comes down to traffic flow and new technology.

Autonomous Vehicles Could Mean We Need A New Color At Traffic Lights

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are becoming the future of automotive. Self-driving cars will be more prevalent in the coming years on the roads. The new color light would be to alert human drivers on what to do in an intersection.

A new WHITE light could mean 'follow the leader.'

AVs can communicate with each other and the traffic computers. Researchers did testing to figure out how this could affect traffic flow and fuel consumption. They found that AVs communicating with each other and the traffic light could speed things up. The more AVs present, the better the results.

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The white light would tell human drivers to follow the car in front of them and what they are doing. That's assuming we don't have a chip in our brain by then to neuro-link to the other AVs. (The future is a little scary, isn't it?)

No timeline - yet.

It's been talked about since 2020, but there are no plans in place yet for the color to be added. Who knows, in coming years it might be as popular (or unpopular) as the roundabout has been in Minnesota.

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