Broward County, Florida Traffic Lights Fail!

Florida’s Sun Sentinel recently reported that Broward County traffic signals remained in the red or green indication for approximately 20 minutes on Monday October 11, 2011 during rush hour. Apparently, a computer failure was blamed for this occurrence. The computer, supposedly a 21-year old main computer, was overriding the traffic control signal boxes at the intersections.

Broward County intends on replacing the servers and related software over the next six months. Unfortunately, Broward County’s traffic control system‘s failure could not have occurred at a more challenging time of the day otherwise stressing many commuters in pre-rush hour traffic. The exit at south bound interstate 95 and Atlantic Blvd was one of the traffic lights that were malfunctioning. That traffic control devise was stuck in the red stop position halting traffic from exiting interstate 95. Apparently, Broward County commuters were frantically jockeying through all sorts of back roads and parking lots to try to side step the gridlock that was created by the Broward County traffic control system’s computer failure.

Apparently, many of the Fort Lauderdale and Broward County vehicular commuters were not familiar with the alternative means of negotiating an intersection with failed traffic light control device (as contained in Florida’s traffic law statutes). Florida Law requires motorists who are to negotiate an intersection with a failed traffic light to treat the intersection as a four-way stop intersection.

Apparently, many South Florida drivers are unfamiliar with Florida’s motor vehicle laws having to do with negotiating an intersection. There seems to be an epidemic of drivers who neglect to yield the right of way to oncoming traffic at a traffic light controlled intersection indicating green in both directions of oncoming traffic. Unfortunately many drivers turn left in front of oncoming traffic at intersections controlled by a traffic control signal “cutting off” the vehicles having the right of way. This careless driving which is in violation of Florida Statute seems to be recurrent in the city of Weston, FL.

For further discussion regarding this topic please feel free to contact the Fort Lauderdale injury lawyer at info@www.schulaw.com or by calling 1-877-529-0444.