Japan gets countdown traffic lights

One gratifying feature of many pedestrian crossings at large intersections in Japan is that they feature a segmented LED "hourglass" LED next to the lights themselves, with red-lit segments disappearing to indicate the time until you can cross. Now Nagoya is trialling the next-gen of the same approach, with a numeric display above/below the obligatory standing/walking pedestrians. The benefit versus the old version (apart from the fact that we think they look cool) is the fact that you can now tell how long it'll be until the lights change in either direction, rather than simply from red to green as in the past. Presto--relief for impatient people everywhere, provided those numbers count down pretty fast; we'd go spare waiting 50 seconds to cross the road.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese); photo from Yahoo Japan]