File Under Unintended Consequences

The green movement has brought about so many unintended consequences so fast we hardly have time to count them. Here is another.

Cool traffic lights take heat on snowy risksTom Greenwood / The Detroit News
Some northern states are reporting a unique problem with light-emitting diode traffic lights: the cool burning LEDs don't generate enough heat to melt ice and snow that accumulates in front of the lenses on the signals.

Although there are no LED-related reports of crashes or deaths in Michigan, it has reportedly led to dozens of accidents in other states.

Seriously. I can imagine engineers and scientists of the past actually considering this before they let a product go out the door. Glass covered lights, 20 feet in the air...blowing snow...

"We are working on the problem," Dutta said. "We may put a longer shade on the light to shield it from ice and snow, but we're not sure about putting a heater into the light. A heater would cost us money to run the lights, which we don't want to do.

Are traffic engineers to real engineers, what political scientists are to real scientists? I mean, how in the Hell does this turn into a problem you "work on?" How do you miss this?

But don't worry...

...it has reportedly led to dozens of accidents in other states. But we will come up with something down the line: in terms of energy and life cycle savings of LEDs, this is a tiny problem."

A tiny problem huh? Three people get a heart attach while taking Celebrex and the entire market is killed.

Anything for the Greening of...

I guess if we can sacrifice our economy for cap and trade and we can print 30 billion a year for that Copenhagen nonsense, then killing a few people and wrecking a bunch of cars is an easy decision...as long as it is done to "save the planet."

If "greening..." were a conservative idea, it would have been litigated, legislated, and perp walked to GITMO. If Greening were conservative, it would have been water boarded by the ACLU while Janeane Garofalo pulled out it's fingernails. But the media will always ignore these examples because they don't fit the Big Narrative.

Nothing to see here...