Why the Dutch Wait Less at Traffic Lights
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used as the standard reference for what genuinely smart traffic signals look like, in threads about traffic engineering and self-driving cars.
What it is
Not Just Bikes explains how Dutch traffic lights use early detection, transit priority and conflict-free design to cut waiting. The aim is to move as many people as possible rather than as many cars.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Kim_Bruning · 2021-12 · on “In 2019 40% of San Francisco traffic fatalities are from left turns”
Here's a link to some traffic light systems that you can trust most of the time. But nothing is perfect, so you're still required to pay attention yourself too, of course. [this video]
Recommends jodrellblank · 2022-12 · on “P-22 Has Died”
See the youtube channel Not Just Bikes[1], specifically videos like - "Why the Dutch wait less at traffic lights" - [this video] argues that American traffic engineering is optimised for car movement, at the expense of pedestrians and bikes, whereas Dutch traffic engineering is to minimise conflict between vehicles and maximise movement of people overall. Leading to more complex but more efficient intersections. - "The Dutch solution for safer sidewalks - continuous sidewalks" - [LINK] has crossings at junctions where cars and people intersect designed so the cars visibly have to travel over the sidewalk through the people's area, instead of designed so the people have to visibly travel over the
Cites bkor · 2020-09 · on “Hotel guest in Thailand jailed for defamation after posting bad online reviews”
Pedestrians generally have right of way. Singapore is pretty exceptional in this. Further, loads of Asian countries are pretty poor safety wise. I don't think a comparison to other Asian countries is beneficial. Singapore probably also benefits that owning a car is quite expensive, plus sort of ok public transport (a bus is terribly slow though!). Singapore still heavily favours a car. A public transport ride can be easily 2x-3x the time as a car trip. From your link: > Elderly pedestrians accounted for two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities. (1 in 2 accidents involving elderly pedestrians was due to jaywalking) Singapore does seem safe in a deaths/100k comparison. There's some EU figures w
Cites Someone · 2021-12 · on “In 2019 40% of San Francisco traffic fatalities are from left turns”
FTA: “40% of SF traffic fatalities in 2019 involved drivers making left turns who didn’t see the person in the crosswalk until it was too late.” If there are traffic lights, there should not be anybody on those crosswalks. Neither should there be “incoming traffic, including bicyclists”. Good junction/traffic light design avoids having streams of traffic crossing each other (“conflict free intersections”). See [LINK] and the (linked from there) video [this video]
Cites oblio · 2023-01 · on “Mercedes Is the First Automaker to Offer Level 3 Self-Driving in the US”
To give a simple example, the US spends a ton of infrastructure. Yet it doesn't even have really smart traffic lights like the Dutch do. [this video] Just think about any large scale governmental software project and amplify that 10-100x. That's what I imagine :-) > The design of the website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and built by a number of federal contractors, most prominently CGI Group of Canada. The original budget for CGI was $93.7 million, but this grew to $292 million prior to launch of the website. While estimates that the overall cost for building the website had reached over $500 million prior to launch and in early 2014 HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews
Cites ignormies · 2023-10 · on “California suspends GM Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment”
As an extension of the argument the comment you're replying to was making: Many (most?) intersections in the Netherlands have early detection systems that change the light _before_ the car reaches it. But they didn't just do this for cars, they also do this for bikes. And public transit gets signal priority allowing buses and trams to almost always get green lights. They've spent the money improving transportation of all forms, not just cars. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
Cites seer · 2025-10 · on “Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model”
In some European countries all of this is commonplace - check out the not just bikes video on the subject - [this video] Detects if you are coming to the intersection and with what speed, and if there is no traffic blocking you automatically cycles the red lights so you don’t have to stop at all.