We rely and place so much trust on the traffic system to do all of the decision making work. We just follow its orders. But what if the system experiences a failure unexpectedly? Accidents probably will occur, traffic grinds to a halt. I have been in a situation on a highway intersection where the light was stuck on red and it was a horrible experience. This is the problem with a centralized traffic system. I have noticed that even I have started to place too much trust in the walk signals while crossing streets. I have caught myself failing to look both ways. While its nice that the traffic system reduces some cognitive load, It's not 100% working in favor of our safety. I think the US ought to conduct more experiments like this to see if traffic accidents can be reduced. I'd like to see an experiment in NYC! So many bike accidetns here.
