LED traffic lights fading, LED's not working.

[unique]

In my City there are a lot of LED traffic lights. A lot of these were installed about 2 years ago. But now I see a lot of them are not as bright as they used to be and big chunks of LED are not operating. I would have thought LED would have been more reliable then the old traffic lights with just a light bulb in them?
This is a pretty big safety concern with only sections of the lights working... To change or fix the traffic light you would need to replace the whole thing which would cost more wouldn't it?

 

[KD7EIR]

In my City there are a lot of LED traffic lights. A lot of these were installed about 2 years ago. But now I see a lot of them are not as bright as they used to be and big chunks of LED are not operating. I would have thought LED would have been more reliable then the old traffic lights with just a light bulb in them?
This is a pretty big safety concern with only sections of the lights working... To change or fix the traffic light you would need to replace the whole thing which would cost more wouldn't it?

My city has been using LED traffic lights for a few years now, and we have not had any problems.

 

[NightFlyer]

In my City there are a lot of LED traffic lights. A lot of these were installed about 2 years ago. But now I see a lot of them are not as bright as they used to be and big chunks of LED are not operating. I would have thought LED would have been more reliable then the old traffic lights with just a light bulb in them?
This is a pretty big safety concern with only sections of the lights working... To change or fix the traffic light you would need to replace the whole thing which would cost more wouldn't it?

Actually the red yellow and green modules are just that - modules. Yes they cost more per unit but the ones in my city rarely show any issues. The ones they originally put up years ago are still working fine and are still very bright. Going from 125+ watts to 7-17 watts per bulb saves huge money on power cost. I do not know the cost of each module or how long it would take in power savings to offset the extra cost of the LED modules.

Now, I have heard of some of them getting shot at, which would cause all or part of the module to fail, but to my knowledge, most intersections use more than one traffic light per direction, so even if one module were to fail, the other(s) are still working.

Some intersections in parts of town still use the old traditional incandescent bulb/reflector/lenses.

 

[unique]

Even with the lights that are still operating without any problem. I still see few dead LED's. Not sure if this is normal for some to not work.
Yeah, they are definitely better then the older incandescent bulb but was shocked to see a chunk of the LED's not working on one of the lights.

 

[greenlight]

Write to the Dept of public works and ask them to stop skimping with the budget traffic lamps.

 

[Jarl]

Like with anything, there's cheap crap and quality. Quality would be far less likely to break, chances are those in charge used the cheap stuff. Think KD vs surefire; one is a lot more likely to break/malfunction than another.

I'm a cynic, shoot me ;)

 

[senecaripple]

i too noticed some of ours are out! our city/state are in a financial crisis, so, i doubt they'll be repairing/replacing them anytime soon! our politicians are more concerned about free healthcare than public safety!

 

[WadeF]

Could people be throwing bottles, rocks, or who knows what at the lights and damaging them?

 

[rockz4532]

maybe the 50000 hours have gone past?

 

[LukeA]

I think all the LEDs are driven with the same voltage so the reds get more current. (the vast majority of failures in my town are in the reds)

 

[ikendu]

I've been watching the LED lights in our city since I joined CPF years ago.

I've never seen any problems with burned out LEDs or diminished brightness.

There might be some... but I've not seen them and I've been paying attention all that time.

 

[gillestugan]

The first LED traffic lights were installed 1997here in Sweden. Now almost all of them have LEDs. I have never seen any dim lights, or heard they have had top change any of them.

 

[matrixshaman]

maybe the 50000 hours have gone past?

Assuming they are on 50% of the time 365 days a year that would take about 11 years to reach a 50,000 hour usage. I doubt that is the problem. They probably bought the LED modules from a cheap manufacturer.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I've seen LED traffic lights in this area for a couple of years now, and I think I've only seen one that had a problem. It's a far, far better record than I've seen with the incandescents they replaced.

And they tend to not fail catastrophically like incandescents do. If an incandescent fails, it can cause an accident. If a single LED or a section of them fails, the lamp still lights and drivers can still determine who has the right of way. That, to me, is priceless.

 

[LukeA]

I've seen LED traffic lights in this area for a couple of years now, and I think I've only seen one that had a problem. It's a far, far better record than I've seen with the incandescents they replaced.

And they tend to not fail catastrophically like incandescents do. If an incandescent fails, it can cause an accident. If a single LED or a section of them fails, the lamp still lights and drivers can still determine who has the right of way. That, to me, is priceless.

That's true, the chance of a failure resulting in every LED going out at once is 1/(50000^150) or so per hour. (if 150 is the number of LEDs)

 

[Illum]

I guess no one took heatsinking seriously while designing the LEDs to sit so close to each other:shrug:

 

[csshih]

I see many, many, lights with broken patches of LEDs. :shrug:

 

[Mr Happy]

This is an interesting story. I don't think I recall seeing any traffic light with faulty LEDs ever, and almost all of them are LED powered around here. Puzzling...

 

[Lynx_Arc]

even if they don't but last 5 times as long as an incan the cost of replacing 4 incan bulbs probably is more than the cost of aoother LED module perhaps.

 

[ikendu]

I see many, many, lights with broken patches of LEDs. :shrug:

Roughly how many is "many, many"?

2? 10? 20? More?

Just curious. I've never seen any in our city.