Eko Stoplight Timer for Road Traffic Lights

Industrial Designer Damjan Stanković has designed a simple, but very practical system for helping drivers to save fuel and drive a little more efficiently. The idea is a countdown timer that encircles a standard red stop-light. The idea means that drivers can tell how long it will be before the red light changes to amber and then green.

There are a couple of advantages to this countdown timer, most notably fuel efficiency. If you know that the lights are not going to change any time soon, you could switch off your engine for a little while. Rather than switch on your engine again too early (i.e. when you’re guessing that the light is about to change), you can see exactly when it’s a good time to switch on your engine again.

Even if there’s not enough time to switch off your engine, it does mean that you can put the handbrake on and put the car in neutral for a while, rather than wasting fuel whilst holding the car on biting point.

The other significant advantage is that you reduce road-rage just a little. Since drivers know exactly when the lights are about to change, they are less likely to get frustrated with what feels like a slow light change. Sometimes it can appear that stop lights have frozen, but a countdown timer would stop drivers jumping the lights because they think that the light has frozen on red.

The only down-side with a countdown timer that I can think of, is that some drivers might jump the red lights when there are only a couple of bars left on the countdown timer. Thinking that the light change is imminent, they might jump the gun too early. Potentially causing accidents.

Source: Yanko Design