We've all head Captain Herb talk about sunshine slowdowns. At one busy Sandy Springs intersection, the problem wasn't the drivers being blinded by the setting sun, but the traffic detection cameras.
"The cameras were pointed in a west direction," says Brad Edwards, Director of Transportation for Sandy Springs. "At a certain time in the afternoon, the sun would get into the camera lens, blind the camera and it could not detect the presence of cars at the intersection."
Edwards tells WSB they knew what the problem was because it would happen at the same time every afternoon, like clockwork.
"It didn't happen all the time, because the sun moves across the sky," he says. "It would happen in late spring and late fall."
They tried every solution, some of them creative.
"We did try a form of sunglasses," says Edwards. "It was a visor that went over the lens, but that didn't solve it."
They tried moving the cameras, but that also did not work. Eventually engineers realized the only answer was to remove the sun from the equation altogether.
Edwards said they found the solution using a ground up approach.
In mid-December, the city installed the city’s first Sensys Puck, a wireless sensor device that detects vehicle presence and movement.
The device is embedded in the lane, and it’s not adversely impacted by weather.
The city utilized both a detection camera and the Sensys Puck sensor at the intersection for several weeks to monitor effectiveness of both. The in-ground sensor provided the best results.
Edwards says since the sensor was installed, reports of issues at the intersection have dropped to zero.