Not just red, amber and green, traffic lights will have a new colour. Here's why

The traffic lights on the roads may not appear as they used to any more. For more than a century, the traffic lights have been known to have only three colours - red, amber and green.

However, they are now likely to have a fourth colour after scientists suggested that adding another colour will help traffic flow near driverless vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles(AV) are a new concept and no completely driverless cars have made it to the road yet.

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Self-driving taxi firm Waymo is close to finalising what is called SAE4 in California and Arizonaand other companies like Tesla are also producing self-driven vehicles.

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As of now, the government has not allowed self-driven vehicles on UK roads but they are soon to make their debut after the Automated Vehicles Act is passed.

When the act is passed, the roads will see a mix of driverless vehicles and human-steered cars.

White traffic light for self-driving cars

To ensure that the traffic moves smoothly, the North Carolina State University's engineers have proposed what is called a ‘white light’ at traffic lights that allows self-driving cars to help when there is a traffic flow and allow human drivers to understand what is happening.

Study lead Dr Ali Hajbabaie said that the plan was to get into the computing power of the AVs and understand which vehicles are where.

"The white phase concept incorporates a new traffic signal so that human drivers know what they are supposed to do," Hajbabaie said.

"Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them," he added.

The paper was published by Dr Hajbabaie and his team in the Journal ofComputer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.

The team formed a series of computer simulations which helped in visualising how the new traffic light system will work.

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According to the system, the AVs were expected to communicate with each other wirelessly and with the computers which are controlling the traffic signals.

At the time when AVs approach the intersection, the computers will activate the new traffic light system.

The white light will be an indication that the AVs are coordinating their movements through the intersection and all non-automated vehicles will have to follow the vehicle ahead.

Dr Hajbabaie said that the system will improve travel time as well as fuel efficiency and will ensure the safety of everyone on the roads.

"If at some point in the future we see almost universal adoption of AVs, our models suggest that delays at intersections would decrease by more than 25%," Dr Hajbabaie said.

"More realistically, we will eventually see a lower percentage of wirelessly connected AVs on the road, but there would still be meaningful improvements in traffic time," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)