MACHINE CONTROL

Evening Star, Issue 21007, 22 January 1932, Page 11

MACHINE CONTROL

FOR LONDON TRAFFIC A new traffic control device which might be described as a “machine with a mind,” is on show at the Public Works, Roads, and Transport Congress and Exhibition, at the Royal Agricultural Hall. Islington, says the ‘Daily Telegraph/ An experimental installation has been ordered by the Commissioner of City Police, and will be tried out at the Bracecnurch street and Cornhill crossing. The machinery will be of British construction.

In appearance the device is similar to the traffic lights in Oxford street, but in the new system vehicles themselves control the lights as they pass over sections of rubber set flush with the . road surface some distance from the crossing. These detectors have no moving parts and are unaffected by snow, ice, rain, or hail. The brain of tno wonder stands unobtrusively by the roadside, a complicated piece of machinery resembling an elaborate wireless set. It is inside this little box that the “ first come, first served” principle is observed —the first vehicle to pass over the dote^: - section secures the right of way. In a thoroughfare like Oxford street detectors would be placed only in the side streets, so that the main traffic stream would not be i errupted unless a vehicle was actually waiting to cross. The invention, it is stated, has been working for a considerable time in two hundred American cities, and accident statistics, compiled from an average of eight intersections in three of the towns show a reduction of 60.5 per cent. Tho device is known as the A.T.M. electromatic street traffic control system, but stallholders at the exhibition call tho machine “Bobby.”