Traffic lights for emergencies

Traffic lights that help free up traffic in a congested city during emergencies

In my country's busy cities, emergency vehicles such as police or ambulances cannot get to where they are needed quickly due to heavy traffic. This affects the population living in the cities, about 3 million people in Costa Rica. 

The resulting problems are the delay of help in emergencies, where it can be police help, a fire, a robbery or a life or death situation. On several occasions, services can take up hours to reach the point of the city where the situation is affecting. 

It even gets to the point where it is better to pay for a cab or Uber to go to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance. 

The solution are traffic lights that are controlled from a central station, the central station receives the request for help. The departure point and the arrival point are taken and the fastest route is calculated. A system of sensors in the traffic lights detects the traffic on that route and the surrounding areas. Then is this used to find the path of action of the traffic lights to clear the way for the emergency vehicle to follow. 

The idea is to use traffic lights, although it can be reduced to much smaller systems that are added to them. It would use wireless connection networks so that the traffic light network does not need added infrastructure. Artificial intelligence and statistics would be used to determine the most congested areas, as well as to determine the most viable route. Geolocation technologies would also be used to determine the position of emergency vehicles and streamline the system. 

The target population is anyone in need of emergency services in affluent cities in countries that cannot afford redevelopment due to their political and economic situation. 

The idea is to solve people's immediate needs. Drastically reduce waiting times in situations where emergency vehicles are needed.

At the moment, the solution is in the idea phase. I (Emmanuel Ramirez) am the only worker at the moment. 

I am a final year student of Industrial Design Engineering and I am also studying Computer Science with several specialties. I have experience in product design, project management, software creation, etc.

I commute around the city by public transportation at different times of the day almost every day. I live in the suburbs, so every time I have to go downtown it is an exhausting experience. The traffic and hustle and bustle is constant. It is very common to see ambulances on the streets asking for room and not being able to move forward because the streets are not made to support that amount of traffic. It is already a cultural thing in the country to make fun of the time it takes for emergency services to arrive. 

Two very real examples of the situation, the first is that people say "call the ambulance to arrive in half an hour". And the other is that the emergency call service, the 911 number in Costa Rica, offers the emergency cancellation service. Many times it is used when the ambulance is needed and does not arrive in less than 1-2 hours or emergencies are resolved before the arrival of any vehicle.

Because it is only an idea, the population has been approached on a personal basis. Especially two areas, elderly and/or sick people who require ambulance service in order to be constantly transported to the hospital (something common in the Costa Rican health system) and people who are transported with personal vehicles and have had a mishap. All of them have to call the ambulance or traffic. 

In general, people are open to the idea of improving waiting times, young university students want to participate in the solution, but older people just want to see the results and use the system.

It is a first approach to the problem from the technological point of view. This is what generates a differentiation, technology is used as an accompaniment to the classic sound systems in the vehicle to achieve the desired purpose. 

I hope it will change the way emergency vehicles move within the city. Being possible to redistribute the overloading of the streets to leave free passage. At the same time I would hope that the geographical neighbors of Costa Rica adopt a similar system, allowing to reach more people and in the end help as many people as possible. 

For the first year the objective to be achieved is to create the system. Both the tangible product and the necessary software and implement it on a small scale on a trial basis. If successful, the plan is to continue working with different communities that present the same problem and implement the system gradually. 

To achieve the objective it is necessary to assemble the team, work from a design and programming perspective, and create an agreement with the municipality of a busy community. 

Various technologies are used and the project can be scaled to the economic capacity of the client and the technical capacity of the team. In order to describe it in a better way I am going to separate it by parts.  

The most basic system uses wireless data transmission technology. It can be wifi or radio frequency. In the case of wifi, each traffic light works as a repeater that transmits the signal to the nearest ones, creating a network. The command is sent from the control center to tell which traffic lights are to be updated and how they are to do so. If radiofrequency is used, it works with the traffic lights being only receivers of information and executors of instructions, but the idea behind it is the same. Both technologies depend 100% on the commands from the control panel and there is no data sent from the traffic lights to the control panel. 

The second technology to use is GPS, or existing traffic measurement applications such as google maps or Waze. These would also be used in the most basic state to determine the fastest route for the emergency vehicle to take and decongest it. 

Going one step higher, artificial intelligence can be included. Instead of just using data from road users, sensors and cameras at traffic lights are used to determine the fastest routes. This takes into account the amount of traffic in real time and could change during the vehicle's journey. In addition, a better redistribution of the vehicles that were on the clear road after the emergency vehicle has passed can be realized. 

The solution has not been released so the number of people already affected is 0. 

The number of people that may be affected depends on the number of emergencies occurring in the established geographical area. It also depends on the established area. For the first year we would expect to significantly affect between 2000 and 6000 people. A significant increase is expected with the coverage of the project in different parts of the country in the following years.

The financing of the equipment for the creation of the proposal. At this moment, being a student, I can only work on the proposal and at the same time continue studying. It is impossible to hire people or create alternatives that depend on money. I could only create what I can afford with my scholarship. 

The technical barrier is due to my limited knowledge in specific areas. This is due to the fact that I am only one person, a team of more people is necessary for the realization of the project.  

At the legal and market level it may happen that the municipalities disagree and do not want to implement the system without proof of the efficiency of the solution. 

Finally, at the cultural level, it is necessary to teach the users how to use the system. This is feasible to solve with TV commercials. What can happen is that some people do not want to adhere to the system and want to take advantage of it, bypassing traffic regulations to get to their destination faster. 

There are no organizations we are working with at this time. 

The people directly affected by emergency vehicle wait times are the direct beneficiaries. Public entities are the indirect beneficiaries. 

The idea is to provide the raw product and teach how to use it to government entities that control public health and safety. With the product and the knowledge to use it the entities are able to deliver a better emergency care service. 

It can be offered directly, without further intervention by the company. Or it can be offered to provide maintenance and handling services. 

The service is to reduce waiting times. The beneficiaries want it because:  
- Literally their life depends directly on it 
- It would cause a decrease in frustration and concern about the situation in question. 
- With the rapid arrival of emergency vehicles, material costs can be reduced. 
- For the specific case of governmental entities, it presents a way to cover a greater number of emergencies. 

The financial sustainability model is based on two parts. 

Product sales, in case of only sales and training. 

Service subsidization, in case of creating contracts with the country's governmental organizations to keep the intelligent traffic light network running.