BMWs to use EnLighten smartphone app to predict traffic-light patterns


Traffic-lights aren’t a driver’s best friends, but without them, urban roads would be brimming with crunched up metal. In the near future, BMW drivers will find traffic-lights a little more bearable though, thanks to a new technology that’ll tell them how long a light will take to turn from red to green. An Orgeon-based startup called Connected Signals has developed EnLighten, an app that connects online with participating cities’ traffic light control systems. The app then uses a smartphone’s GPS to recognize traffic-lights and tells the user how long the light will take to change.

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How will this help drivers? Simply put, a user will be able to predict just how much time he has to cross through a traffic-light, before it changes to red. Apart from that, while waiting at a traffic-light, drivers will also know if they’ve got enough time to reply to text messages, or if they simply should wait till they roll up at the next intersection! While most cities around the world have adopted traffic-lights that incorporate a “countdown” display, an app like EnLighten works quite well too. BMWs up ahead will include the app in the console display, enabling quick access via the BMW Apps option.

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[Via – Gizmag]

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