Severe weather can lead to snow build up on traffic lights

By Stephanie Zografos

Despite saving the city thousands of dollars, the transition to LED traffic lights has become dangerous in severe weather conditions.

A school bus accident occurred last week when the driver, who has since been charged, could not see the traffic signal because snow was covering the light. While the previously used incandescent light bulbs burn 150 watts, LED lights do not burn as brightly making it so the snow cannot melt as easily.

“For our transportation consortium, it needs to be a concern and it has got to be a part of their professional development,” said Scott Scantlebury, the public relations officer of the Greater Essex County District School Board. “That is something to be aware of.”

While it is possible to have snow build up on traffic lights, it is also very rare in Windsor due to the warmer climate. John Wolf, Windsor’s manager of traffic operations, said that it has occurred four times in the past 10 years where snow has built up so much it was a problem.

“You have to have almost perfect conditions for snow to accumulate on a traffic signal head,” said Wolf. “So the snow has to be a very moist, sticky snow, the wind has to blow hard, the temperature has to be somewhere between 31-33 degrees, and then the wind has to blow the snow into the signal head, because the signal heads have a cover and therefore something has to be blown into them.”

Currently there are no effective solutions and the only way to remove the snow is by manually scraping it off the light.

“They are looking at some LEDs that have heaters in them, like a defroster on a rear window, so something like that might work,” said Wolf.

According to Wolf it is the responsibility of the driver to ensure the safety of their passengers should this type of situation occur.

“So say there was a hydro failure or say you can’t see the signal head for some reason, your obligation as a driver is to slow down, come to a stop and proceed only if the way is clear,” said Wolf.

In order to help lower the number of accidents the traffic operations of Windsor are presently looking into more ways which this could be avoided.