Eko: Information design on traffic lights is sexy!

This is a cool idea, although in my opinion it would actually be equally or more useful on the *green* light. I have a feeling more accidents are caused by people trying to figure out whether to hit the brakes or run through yellow-turning-red lights than by not knowing how long until the red light turns green. There are also ways to address this that don't require any hardware modifications to the traffic light. Traffic lights in Russia (and perhaps other parts of Europe) have an interesting pattern where the green light blinks for several seconds before the light turns yellow and then red. Going in the opposite direction, the yellow light turns on for a second along with the red, before the whole thing switches to green. (And unlike in the states, there's no brief pause where all directions are red before the next turns green -- while one direction has a yellow light about to turn red, the other direction has red+yellow about to turn green, and the first direction goes to red at the same instant the other goes to green) All together it definitely cuts down on the blasting through yellow lights. People will actually start slowing down and stopping at blinking green, and will be ready and starting to go right when the light turns green.