Lights. Camera. Emissions.

Every day, I drive my daughter to school in the city. Our usual route goes through six intersections regulated with traffic lights. Over the months I’ve learned the pattern of their timing and greatly enjoy “catching” all the greens with the least amount of effort and, of course, energy. I’m a big fan of fuel efficiency.

Yesterday, as we drove into town, we were greeted by a weird scene at one of the light-free intersections. There was a gathering of people on the pavement, a camera, and a man speaking into a microphone. As I waited to make my left turn I wondered what all this was about. So when I came back home, I googled the news.

This is what I found. I think Google Translate does a pretty decent job with Bulgarian to English translations but here’s the gist of it: Stara Zagora has become the second city after Sofia to take part in a Europe-wide experiment involving blinking green lights to warn drivers when the green is about to switch to yellow.

According to the experimenters, this would reduce accidents, fatalities, and — you guessed it — emissions. The above report notes that such an experiment had been done in Sofia previously and the results had been very encouraging. At which point, for maybe the second time in my life, I felt like throwing my phone at the wall.

Let me tell you about that Sofia experiment. Years ago — about eight, to be more precise — the city authorities introduced the blinking green light and all the traffic lights in the city — and in three other cities, Stara Zagora among them — blinked green before turning yellow.

Until last year, when one person sued the authorities. Because there was no stipulation about blinking green lights in the traffic code. The authorities were forced to remove the blinkage because the letter of the law is the letter of the law.

To this day I cannot comprehend what sort of person would sue a city’s authorities for a measure that had proved to be beneficial. The authorities and the traffic police reported data showing just how beneficial it had been: accidents in Sofia alone had halved after the introduction of the blinking green light.

When the letter of the law forced the phase-out of the experimental blinkage, officials said they expected a surge in accidents because drivers would have a shorter reaction time. Yet they could do little else but shrug — it was an experiment, we never made the necessary amendments to the traffic code, so it’s over. Until the EU decided to use traffic light blinkage as a weapon against emissions.

I remember how frustrated I was when the traffic lights stopped blinking. I had just renewed my licence a few months earlier, I was getting used to regular driving for the first time in my life, and I really liked the blinking green lights.

They made me feel safer because the blinkage gave me more time to make a decision whether to stop or continue, depending on the size and busyness of the intersection I was crossing. It also gave those behind me so time to recognise which way the lights were going to go and not ram into me.

Now, like millions of other drivers, I’m used to non-blinking lights. I’m so used I no longer notice the absence of blinkage. I had, in fact, completely forgotten about that blinkage experiment until I saw the news about the new experiment. And the word emissions.

When those city authorities did the initial experiment eight years ago, there was no mention of emissions anywhere. Not that I’ve read all the official documentation but the news reports around that lawsuit that ended the experiment suggested the focus was on safety. On fewer accidents. On fewer people dying on the streets.

Not this time. This time, it’s about emissions. Because “a previous experiment done in Sofia shows that over a single month, emissions from the traffic in one direction of the road where a blinking green light operated declined by 3.2 tonnes,” per the first report linked above.

This is absolutely fabulous and totally excellent, and we should definitely do more of it, everywhere. For a year, though, because that’s how long the experiment will last.

I cannot help but wonder about the safety implications of getting drivers used to one sort of traffic light signalling only to switch them to another in a year. But I’m sure all will be well because it’s emissions we need to be thinking about, not boring stuff like accidents.

And here’s a silly idea — if our decision-makers care this much about emissions, which they clearly do, how about adding some requirements for efficient driving to the driving-school curriculum across the EU?

I don’t actually know, maybe in the more advanced parts of the EU this is already a fact but not here, not if what I see on the streets every day is any indication. Here, it’s standard practice to accelerate right until the speed bump and then brake hard to go over it.

It’s standard practice to take off from the intersection with all the horsepowers under your bonnet only to, once again, brake hard when you reach the jam on the other side of that intersection.

If we’re going to be serious about emissions, how about helping drivers get better at driving instead of screwing with our heads by switching blinking green for non-blinking green and back again?