Bengaluru students design affordable traffic signal bar

If Bengalureans could count the time they have spent at traffic signals, they could easily go on a holiday. Yes, they are the most tired lot when it comes to waiting at traffic signals. Also, not all traffic signals in the city have digitised timers to indicate the number of seconds before the colour turns green.

Four engineering students of Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology — Prajwal Ashwin Cutinha, Daniel K, David J Prabhakar and Sachin Philip — with the help of their teachers, have designed an affordable traffic signal bar which can be used to indicate the time duration at a traffic signal.

The signal bar, a series of lights arranged in a vertical fashion, comprises a micro controller unit through which the time duration can be adjusted. Once the signal bar is fed with a specific duration, it becomes easy for motorists to know the remaining waiting period. The signal bar is simpler than the digitised timers and even costs lesser. While two-digit digitised timers cost Rs 10,000, the signal bar costs only Rs 3,000, said Dr Dinesh K Anvekar, director, Research and Development Product Innovation Cell, Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology.

The digitised timer directly displays the specific number of seconds remaining for the signal to change. However, in case of the signal bar, motorists have to keep an eye on the bar to know the time remaining for the colour to turn green. But the device has its own merits. The bar will be visible even from a long distance and can be useful for those who are far away from the signal. “When one or two segments of the digitised timers do not function, there is a possibility of making a wrong interpretation. This can be avoided using a traffic signal bar,” adds Anvekar.

The students have appealed to assistant commissioner of police (Traffic) to consider adopting the traffic signal bar at signals that have no digitised timers.