Audi’s new traffic light countdown seems basic, but it’s a big step for autonomy

Even when the instrument cluster is in navigation mode, traffic light information is displayed in the bottom right hand corner.

Audi

Even when the instrument cluster is in navigation mode, traffic light information is displayed in the bottom right hand corner. Audi

The countdown will change if you’ve set your blinker to left turn at an intersection with a protected left.

Megan Geuss

The countdown will change if you’ve set your blinker to left turn at an intersection with a protected left. Megan Geuss

Audi always offered the local speed limit where that information was available, and now you can see the countdown to green next to it.

Megan Geuss

Audi always offered the local speed limit where that information was available, and now you can see the countdown to green next to it. Megan Geuss

The countdown will change if you’ve set your blinker to left turn at an intersection with a protected left. Megan Geuss

Audi always offered the local speed limit where that information was available, and now you can see the countdown to green next to it. Megan Geuss

LAS VEGAS—“You go and you build it in California, but where are you gonna test it? You’re gonna test it in Nevada.”

Angela Castro, the senior director of government affairs media and marketing in southern Nevada, was speaking. She looked around the room at a small group of sleepy reporters in a second-floor conference room looking over Sin City’s Traffic Management Center (TMC), which was surprisingly hushed despite the real-time images of bustling intersections displayed on a handful of giant mounted screens.

“We’re a one-stop shop,” Castro explained. Three years ago, Audi wanted to build a feature that would let its cars tap into traffic light information. Instead of having to visit dozens of authorities across neighboring municipalities like they would have to in many cities, the German automaker went to Las Vegas, where the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Southern Nevada processed traffic information for the whole metropolis under one roof.

Because of this consolidated structure, Audi was able to launch vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication network in Las Vegas this week. The feature itself is not earth-shattering from a consumer’s perspective—when you approach a traffic light, Audi’s driver instrument cluster will display how much longer you have to wait until the next green. But behind this little amuse-bouche of information is a lot of engineering, statistics, and politics that have laid the groundwork for a more competent, more accurate, and more efficient fleet of autonomous cars.

Of course, this is not the first time a car company has offered traffic light status to drivers. In 2015, BMW released an app called EnLighten for drivers in Portland, Oregon; Eugene, Oregon; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Salt Lake City, Utah that would tell the driver the status of the traffic signal ahead and offer a real-time prediction of when the light would change.

Creating “informed waiting”

Audi’s new Traffic Light Information feature can be found on 2017 A4s, Q7s, and allroad vehicles that have Audi’s Connect Prime package—which puts customers out $10 to $30 monthly, depending on the length of the subscription.

Angela Castro, the senior director of government affairs media and marketing in southern Nevada, is very excited about vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.

Credit: Megan Geuss

There are caveats: this feature only works at the 1,100 of the 1,300 intersections that are actively managed by RTC’s system. Some lights are remotely managed and won’t send signal data back to RTC regularly, or they’re pedestrian-controlled and only turn red for oncoming traffic when a pedestrian signals that they want to cross.

Traffic light information might also not display even when you come to an actively managed traffic light due to statistical determinations on the back-end. Southern Nevada’s RTC sends traffic light data to a third-party company called Traffic Technology Services, or TTS, a Beaverton, Oregon-based company formed three years ago by a German firm that had been doing traffic consulting in Europe. TTS analyzes RTC’s data and makes signal timing predictions. TTS then sends these predictions, as well as confidence levels for the predictions, to Audi’s Modular Backend Kit (MBB), which validates cars requesting traffic signal information and sends that information along over a 4G LTE connection after a successful validation. (Audi applauded 4G LTE as having low latency and solid nationwide coverage, which is why the automaker is going that route instead of having the car communicate over Dedicated Short Range Communications, or DSRC, which has been the assumption for most theoretical V2I systems in the past.)

In order to keep the Traffic Light Information feature accurate for end users, all signal predictions that fall outside of TTS’ confidence interval are thrown out by Audi before they get to your car.

That means that sometimes you’ll come to a light that ought to have a signal countdown, and you won’t see one. There could be a lot of reasons why, in that moment, TTS has little confidence in its signal prediction. For example, one ambulance provider in Las Vegas is able to alter streetlights en route to ensure a speedy trip to the hospital. If such an ambulance is in your vicinity, Audi’s Traffic Light Information feature will decline to offer a prediction or stop its countdown if you’re already sitting at a light and waiting for the next green. Another example: if GPS can’t place your car so that Audi knows where you are in relation to the stoplight, the countdown to green won’t enable.

I’ll note that after doing a short drive around Las Vegas with Audi’s new feature, the traffic light information was really accurate.

But there were some situations, mostly involving yellow lights, where the traffic light information can get confusing, especially if you’re not accustomed to the system. If you’re approaching a green light that Audi thinks you’ll make, no traffic light information appears, and you can feel confident to approach that intersection at the speed limit. But there’s no way to know if the stoplight you’re approaching is actually on Audi’s radar, so if you’re approaching a green light that’s about to turn but Audi has no data on that light, no traffic light information appears—you’re getting the same signal as if it’s all clear to approach the stoplight at speed. That can cause some startling stops if you feel like you’ll make it through the green light but get surprised by a yellow 10 feet from the start of the intersection.

Obviously, like any advancement in driving software, the key is to drive defensively and keep your wits about you, no matter what your car is advertised to do.

What’s the point?

Audi can’t stop your car from hitting all the most enraging red lights on the Strip, but it can help you breathe through them with “informed waiting.”

Credit: Audi

“You see that you have 60 seconds to wait before the light changes, your face will relax, your shoulders will relax,” Whittemore said. “In Las Vegas you have lights that are 130 seconds. What am I gonna do with two minutes?” The manager suggested that, knowing that you have all this time on your hands, you could take off your jacket, help adjust children in the back seat, or have a conversation with a passenger. Audi can’t fix long lights, but a feature like Traffic Light Information could make the experience less frustrating.

The long-term goal is much more lofty in aspiration: vehicle-to-infrastructure communications are the next step in vehicle autonomy.

Thus far, we’ve outfitted cars with cameras and other sensors to “see” lights like we see them. But if a car can dispense with the visuals and rely on a system like that of TTS and Audi to know what the stop light in the vicinity is saying, then that car can choose an appropriate speed if it’s coming around a corner that has a stoplight after it. Or it could get data from those traffic signals and use it to re-route the passenger if the original route looks like it might take too long.

Audi outlined some other possibilities for the technology (none of which is truly on the horizon just yet—these are merely ambitions). For example: having data from traffic lights could allow Audi to display a target speed for the driver so that she only hits green lights on her route. Better yet, Audi could use the countdown-to-green feature to make start-stop engine systems more efficient. Start-stop helps modern cars reduce their emissions by making sure the car doesn’t idle in stop-and-go traffic. With traffic light information, the car could start the engine back up just before the light changes, allowing for a smoother ride.