By Deb Lovig

Heavy snow heaped over large portions of the U.S. this winter spurred some seriously negative media attention on the performance of LED traffic signals. Reports of snow covered signals being blamed for traffic accidents in snow storms appeared all over the media.

Some of the folks in participating cities of the LED City® initiative got a little concerned this negative coverage might spill over and somehow affect their ability to move forward with LED street lights. Street lights are a different animal so we mostly tried to stay out of the way of the negative traffic signal stuff.

At the LED City Council Meeting in Indian Wells this week, the question of whether the LEDs should be deep-sixed for not being hot enough to melt the snow on traffic signals came up. Speaking up in defense of LED traffic signals was Bruce Kinzey, who works at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the Department of Energy and was one of the expert presenters at the meeting.

One of his colleagues had the misfortune to be in Washington, D.C., during a recent heavy snow dump. Here’s the photo he took of an incandescent-based traffic signal there.

‘Nuff said. And, if you want to take a look at Bruce’s informative LED City Council Meeting presentation, you can access it here.