The traffic signals in Washington, DC, can now talk to your car—if it’s an Audi
Enlarge (credit: Audi)
On Wednesday, Audi announced that the traffic lights in Washington, DC, can now communicate with the company's cars. The nation's capital joins Las Vegas, Nevada; Dallas and Houston, Texas; the California cities of Palo Alto and Arcadia; Denver, Colorado; and Portland, Oregon, as locations where Audi vehicles equipped with the company's Connect Prime service will be able to tell drivers how long they have to wait for that red light to turn green.
The feature is called Traffic Light Information, and we first explored it when it was rolled out to Las Vegas in 2016. Briefly, Audi has been working with Traffic Technology Services to connect municipalities' traffic management systems with vehicles via 4G LTE. If an equipped vehicle is waiting at a red light, the car's instrument cluster will let the driver know how long it will be before the light changes.
"This initiative represents the kind of innovation that is critical for us to advance the traffic safety goals of Vision Zero," said DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. "We look forward to building on this and similar partnerships as we continue to build a safer, stronger, and smarter DC." More than 600 DC intersections will communicate with Traffic Light Information, adding to roughly 1,000 intersections in the seven other cities that are also covered.
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