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Maryland Computer Crash Causes Gridlock and Mayhem

by Terrence O'Brien on November 6, 2009 at 08:24 AM

O, mighty gods of technology! How beholden to you we are! You hold every facet of our lives in your cold, digital paws. And to remind us of just how much control you wield over our fragile lives, you decided to bring all of Montgomery County, Maryland to a standstill this week.

County technicians are still trying to figure out why a computer that controls all 750 traffic lights in the area crashed around 3 a.m., Wednesday. The computer, which oversees the timing and synchronization of the lights for the entire county, which itself includes several major suburbs of Washington, D.C., dates back to the Carter administration and is in the process of being phased out. But, apparently, the system couldn't hold onto life any longer and turned the entire county into a sea of glowing brake lights. Thanks to the meltdown, the grid failed to switch into rush-hour mode and, as a result, did not leave individual lights green for long enough to keep traffic flowing.

Technicians rushed from signal to signal, throwing switches to put them into high-volume mode. Still, without the computer to synchronize them, it only did so much good. Besides, by that point, traffic had already become an uncontrollable mess. Still it hasn't come to putting an officer at every intersection to direct traffic, "there is nothing that... is necessarily going to change or make better," chief traffic engineer for Montgomery County, Emil Wolanin, told WTOP.

As of Thursday afternoon, the computer has still not returned to service. Technicians were able to isolate the problem (The computer was sending the information, but it was not being properly transferred to traffic signals.), but were stymied as to how to repair it. As Wolanin explained "It's probably 25 to 30 years old... parts are not really available." [From: Washington Post and WTOP, via Slashdot]

Tags: car, outdated, rush hour, RushHour, standstill, top, traffic, traffic lights, TrafficLights

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