Is it just me or is it whack compared to other countries?
The 100 second ones seem absolutely unnecessary at certain intersections, and lead to a lot of congestions. Not to mention how frustrating it is…
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I don’t think there is an algorithm. They’re all just on timers. I’ve never seen sensors on roads here…
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Totally agree! Some intersections take really long and then when the pedestrian light turns green, it only lasts about 10 seconds.
The dumbest traffic lights I’ve seen are in this intersection:
The countdown lasts 100 seconds, but then it just turns indefinitely to “…” and you have to wait until it randomly turns green. This causes cars and motorcycles to start their engine as the countdown ends, but then they suddenly stop and have to go back, because they notice the light hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t be surprised if an absent-minded person didn’t pay enough attention and caused a crash by keeping on moving forward while the light is still red.
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Even worse are the „on demand“ traffic lights which only turn on for the cars when a pedestrian presses a button and otherwise just flash red. Drivers are so used to these lights always being off that they just keep running the red light if they switch to a real red light…
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I had a set of 3 lights on the road near me( not Taipei), they were perfectly synced for about 3 months. You would wait for the first one and when it went to green you would hit the other two on green also. It was smooth and the traffic always went well.
About 6 months ago the middle set was being controlled manually, but they left them out of sync.
Now you always seem to hit all 3 on red, the traffic sort of shuffles along with congestion in the middle section.
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They really love to do manual control here and it makes things worse.
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Hahahaha! Syncing lights?
They first turn the lights red for pedestrians, than after 3 minutes or so they will turn red for cars.
Meanwhile some countries have recently gone a step further and are installing video sensors that detect traffic flow and adjust the lights accordingly, Taiwan doesn’t even have first generation induction loop sensors so it will probably be a long wait before we get that if ever.
But the red light cameras are top notch tech
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It’s always amazed me that we have so little traffic video tech. We have the camera industry here. We have the video object recognition AI guys.
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These are flipping dangerous. There’s a set near me, near a school for crying out loud. I’ve nearly been hit twice there, walking on the green man. This type of crossing actually creates more danger than if there was nothing there at all. They would be better to put an island and just let people cross willy nilly. But you never see islands much here, with the average driver skill here every second blind idiot in a blacked out SUV would probably mount them and stuff their car undercarriage.
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This is super dangerous. I just crossed the street the other day on “…”. Who could have thunk after 3 2 1 there would not be green but many “…”.
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Promptly replying to Line messages while driving seems to be much more important to the average driver than pedestrian safety unfortunately. And the tinted windows common on most cars make it even harder for the police or any automated system to fine anyone for that.
But at least we have cute videos playing on the busses teaching pedestrians to never jaywalk and double check even when the light turns green 
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Those videos are so cheesy they are awesome.
The gangster looking guy always telling his friends to slow down and the too old for high school girl in uniform telling granny not to cross on a red haha