These AI-controlled traffic lights could help save lives

PARIS: What if artificial intelligence allowed first responders to arrive at the scene of an accident more quickly?

This is the challenge that the municipality of Bad Hersfeld, in Germany, is seeking to address by launching a system that automatically regulates traffic by taking direct control of the town's traffic lights.

The idea is to enable the relevant services to get around as quickly as possible and to get to the scene of an accident within 10 minutes.

Initially, the idea is that the artificial intelligence can both calculate and recommend the fastest route, but also intervene directly on the town's traffic by controlling its traffic lights, in order to give priority to emergency vehicles.

To do this, a multitude of traffic data must be analysed, in real time, in order to help the emergency services reach their destination as quickly as possible, all by playing on the management of traffic lights present on their route.

This, however, risks creating traffic jams, which the algorithms will obviously avoid, if possible.

To accomplish this, a central traffic signal control system had to be installed. The city is launching a trial period with the fire department this summer to measure the effectiveness of this project before possibly extending it to other services.

The initiative is supported by the Hessian state government, which hopes that the project will be replicated, as other municipalities are convinced to follow suit.

This is a new step for a town that's already relatively involved in new technologies. For example, the inhabitants of Bad Hersfeld already have the possibility to control the lighting of certain streets via a mobile application.

In France, the idea of controlling traffic via artificial intelligence has already been raised by the mathematician Cédric Villani, a one-time candidate for mayor of Paris.

The idea, according to him, was to improve the flow of traffic in the capital by using artificial intelligence to manage traffic lights in real time. It's an ambitious project, which unfortunately is not yet on the agenda.