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Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles (yle.fi) 64

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage.

(Why isn't everyone doing this already?)
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Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles More

Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles

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  • one of those things that seem obvious in hindsight

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      yes. the US and Canada (at least) have been doing this for a decade or more. rather than just sucking down the obvious bait in the article you could have given it a quick google, but nahhh lets just come here and repeat the same stupid bullshit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rta ( 559125 )

      TFS asks:

      (Why isn't everyone doing this already?)

      The step up in complexity (and cost) from a light on a local timer (often with the local preemption via IR or visible strobe) to a centralized management is significant and the advantages are probably relatively limited in all but the most congested places.

      They definitely do it in Macross and Evangelion though.

      • TFS asks:

        (Why isn't everyone doing this already?)

        The step up in complexity (and cost) from a light on a local timer (often with the local preemption via IR or visible strobe) to a centralized management is significant and the advantages are probably relatively limited in all but the most congested places.

        They definitely do it in Macross and Evangelion though.

        The other big consideration is that it may not help that much. Emergency vehicles still have to go slowly through every single intersection because assuming that all other drivers will pay attention to and obey a red light is apparently too much to ask. Also, if there is traffic congestion, a green light won't help that much. What helps is other drivers paying attention and pulling out of the way. In the US, this is often too much to ask for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trip23 ( 727132 )
      Not really. Basically emergency vehicles are faster, if they cross red lights and/or cars actually make room. A fire truck crossing a red light has less traffic in front of it and can move faster afterwards. Until the next red light. There's a reason they are so noisy.
    • It's been happening since the 1980s. I remember when Fargo, ND installed emergency vehicle priority in like 1984, and used flashing strobes on emergency vehicles to turn lights green for as far the strobe could be seen.
    • Because it's amazingly obvious and decades old. 3m Opticom is one of the popular systems.

    • My city, and all the surrounding cities have been doing this for decades with an optical system that detects emergency lighting on vehicles and immediately stops all opposing traffic and gives green to everything in the direction the emergency vehicle is traveling (straight, left, right). I don't know the range of the system, but I have seen it activated many times.

      Sometimes it is annoying, because it will throw off the cycle (start over). And if there is ANOTHER emergency vehicle not far behind, it will

      • >"My city, and all the surrounding cities have been doing this for decades with an optical system"

        I should have mentioned this is in the USA.

    • It's also one of the things that seem dangerous with foresight. The question of introducing a system needs to ask whether and how the system can be misused to cause real chaos.

      Why isn't everyone doing this? My question is why is your infrastructure so poorly designed that you need to do this? Where I live police and ambulances can already get around traffic. They are allowed to ride on road shoulders, on bike paths (which are ubiquitous), and have dedicated emergency highway on/off ramps allowing them to ge

    • It requires coordination not just been traffic light controls but also an interface to route planning for emergency vehicles.

      This is feasible in the civilized world, but completely impossible in the United States.

  • Why isn't everyone doing this already? (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:05PM (#65964980)

    When I was in college someone told me you could flip a traffic light green by flashing your headlights on and off. I found out instead it was a great way to get pulled over, especially if there was a police car nearby.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

      When I was in college someone told me you could flip a traffic light green by flashing your headlights on and off. I found out instead it was a great way to get pulled over, especially if there was a police car nearby.

      If you have the right kind of strobe light, there are some traffic systems that'll turn green for you. You are correct that the police won't find it amusing.

    • You were doing it wrong. [strobesnmore.com] OK, to be accurate, there are multiple systems, some of which operate in the visible spectrum, some in the infrared, etc. This myth stems from the fact that some systems operate in the visible spectrum and use a binary code, so the idea is that if you did it just right it might work on older systems, though those systems are almost certainly out of service in 2026.

    • In one of the lower-tech, backward locations that I spend time, there is no centralized system of traffic lights, every crossing has a set working on its own.

      Two or three years back the local govt fitted all emergency vehicles with some sort of radio transmitter and every traffic light with the corresponding gadget (one can tell, because they have this weird antenna and a solar battery), so now the ambulance or the fire truck can switch the lights from some distance away. Quite effective and must have cost

    • Your high beams had to be high enough to shine down the tube around the sensor, and obvs it was best done with no cops about. Today I would assume it won't be as easy to fool, and you would need LED headlights because nothing else will switch fast enough. Also, in a major city they might even be monitoring that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Because there are way too many systems and sometimes it's just hard.

      To do a green wave requires all traffic lights to be networked so they can do that. Most are not, because short range communications systems are expensive and WAN based ones even more so. In fact, many "green wave" systems rely on nothing more than the system clock being set correctly so you get a green wave until the clocks drift far apart enough that it stops working and someone goes out and resyncs the clocks again.

      Adding emergency vehic

  • We do this in America (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:06PM (#65964986)
    The white flashing light on top of ambulances and it flashes in binary with a code that tells the lights to change. Not sure if the whole country does that but quite a few states at least.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Yes, we've used the same system here in Canada since... well at least since the 90's and probably earlier.

    • Not really "binary" - just a flash rate: 10Hz is "low priority" 14Hz is "high priority." Yes, it has been hacked, but very easy to find out who is hacking it.

    • That can only control the next upcoming light.

  • This is known as "traffic signal preemption" or "emergency vehicle preemption" and has been in place in a number of countries for years.

    • This is known as "traffic signal preemption" or "emergency vehicle preemption" and has been in place in a number of countries for years.

      As I recall, while in some locations it used an IR signal (which some people tried to spoof, until they got caught, and got a very very large fine), most places have migrated to an encoded RF signal, and others use GPS information to a more integrated traffic grid. And some places (NYC was a poster child; I don't think it has changed) it is not used due to the complexity of managing that cities traffic.

    • Without reading the article I assume this is more advanced.

      It uses route information and sets the greens sooner than line of sight.

      This means the route will be green and clear.

      • But there are many reasons an emergency vehicle might deviate from a prescribed route, and the strobe or transponder systems are much better at adapting to that. Not to mention if you clear the whole planned path immediately, in most US cities, will cause traffic congestion that could take hours to recover from. A system that follows the emergency vehicles and continually adjusts their next couple of blocks allows for much better traffic flow overall.

    • That only trips the cycle for one light at a time.

  • Been in place for over 35 years in the US (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Matt_Bennett ( 79107 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:19PM (#65965018) Homepage Journal

    it's called Priority Green (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption) , and was pretty common before the early 1990. 10Hz IR beacon is "low priority" 14Hz is "high priority."

    • That's great. Maybe the United States should prioritise driver awareness of hazard lights then. In this video the original obstruction vehicles does not use them (perhaps due to damage) followed by dozens of other drivers not using them. Quite bizarre to see. https://youtu.be/-9yqXzZ16ns?s... [youtu.be]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        How do they expect me to finish my Slashdot post with a bunch of flashing lights in my fac[NO CARRIER]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The issues are range, and ease of abuse. Ideally you want the lights to go green long before the emergency vehicle gets there, to give traffic time to clear the junction out and queues to dissipate. The fact that it's just an IR sensor makes it easy for anyone to trigger.

  • Isn't Green Wave just what's always been called a donut run?

  • In metropolitan areas, aka cities, traffic is chaotic. A green light won't make room for emergency vehicles when moving through heavy traffic. Signal Horns are there for a reason. And besides: https://www.wired.com/story/ha... [wired.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Thank goodness nobody other than the Dutch gives a damned about priority for bicycles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      A green light won't make room for emergency vehicles

      This.

      It's easier for emergency vehicles to weave through stopped traffic than worry about morons turning left in front of fire trucks because "Oh good! The light turned green." A few towns around me flip all the lights to red upon emergency vehicle approach. Which also negates the benefits of hackers "blue boxing" the lights.

      Signal Horns are there for a reason.

      This is the Seattle area. We have opiate induced deafness.

      • Yep, I used to work in Offenbach close to a firefighter base, they always switched all the traffic lights at the closest intersection to red before they went out.

  • In fact I once read an article some years back about people getting caught building black boxes to flip the lights and then getting caught doing it. I wonder if The Woz ever looked into that?

  • I was pretty sure we already have the standard green wave stuff like busses getting priority. You can literally see the white diode start to blink on traffic lights when a bus approaches and such. So I went to take a look at details.

    This is the official announcement from the relevant government bureau:

    https://www.fintraffic.fi/fi/u... [fintraffic.fi]

    It's exceptionally light on details of the implementation (likely intentionally to reduce hacking and hijacking of the system). However it does note that "data moves in the off

  • Why isnt it already being done is a good question...

    NZ already has it in place for public transport in most major cities, and the emergency services are switching over from a legacy system to using the same priority system for emergency vehicles as is currently used for public transport.

    https://www.scats.nsw.gov.au/h... [nsw.gov.au]

  • Could this be made available for police vehicles too? When there's a fake donut emergency in the presence of onerous traffic, a swift button press could double or triple the chances of the donuts being intercepted before they become too stale.

  • I've always thought those things should change ALL lights to red, that way no one is driving in either direction. Does anyone know why they don't do this?

    • Because if all the lights turned red, traffic would back up at the intersection in the direction the emergency vehicle was traveling.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cwatts ( 622605 )

        And then the ambulance could drive on the opposite side of the street, like they always do at intersections.

    • Probably because they don't want people stopping at a red light when they are trying to get by; think about it.

    • Four way red is the fault mode.

      Traffic lights also have a physical wire from every green light (the actual light bulb/led connector or socket) that comes back to the controller. The purpose is to detect a conflicting green and if such a thing happens (which should never occur) then the controller switches to four way red and locks out until it's reset.

  • Maybe it’s a false memory or my age but I remember there was a Chrome Box in this list of coloured boxes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and the purpose of that box was to hack the sensors that gave priority to emergency vehicles. Am I making this up or was this a thing?
  • My understanding is they used to change the lights to green in the direction of the emergency service vehicles. But what if emergency service vehicles are coming from more than one direction?

    They then decided it was better to just turn all the lights red, leaving junctions clear for the emergency service divers to sort it out amongst them selves.

    It is DEFINITELY BETTER this way.

    I think I was told that the emergency service vehicle turns on something in the cab to make it happen, but I may be wrong about

  • Emergency vehicles trigger sensors on stop lights using strobe light or RF. Traffic Signal Preemption has been rolling out in the US since at least the late 70's and early 80's. It might not be everywhere, but it's widely used.

    It used acoustic triggering in some places and went to strobes. But now they're shifting to radio and GPS. A lot depends on the what the local infrastructure can support.

  • AFAIK in the USA cars give directly commands to traffic lights to turn the light green with infra red remote control.

    The new system in Finland (HALI) on the other hand works like this:
    1. The car receives GPS coordinates from the satellite
    2. The car communicates the coordinates, moving angle and information for example about turn signals and hand brake via mobile network to the server
    3. The server interprets this information to estimate where traffic lights need to switched and sends commands to traffic ligh

  • Green? In the US, I believe what's usually done is change all lights to red. Seems to make more sense.

  • Because it's insane. If you have to change 100 lights at the right time, for lets say 10 calls per day, with, oh, let's say a .1% chance of failure somewhere in the grid.... basically chaos. We already have pressure plates signalling lights to turn green when someone needs to take a left turn, and I know a handful that are broken, and being "left turn on arrow only YOU WILL NEVER TURN. People have to turn right and do a Uey to get where they need to go. And guess what? It will never be fixed. Becaus

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      If it helps, I have called the road authority about broken signals many times (thanks to Ed!) and have seen them get repaired. I still have the local guy's email address somewhere. And once with a state road, I convinced that guy to add some seconds onto the turn arrow because of the traffic coming out of our busy industrial park. He observed that I was correct, made the change to the PLC and even my coworkers noticed the improvement before I had told them about my phone call.

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