News UFO-style traffic lights to vanish from Sendai

The unit consists of integrated four-way traffic signals for pedestrians and vehicles and is suspended above the centre of an intersection. The traffic lights can be installed at narrow intersections because they require only one support pole instead of a total of eight required for typical traffic signals, and according to the company history of Nagoya Electric Works Co., headquartered in Ama, Aichi Prefecture, the prefectural police asked the firm to develop a new type of traffic light in the 1970s. At the time, the number of fatalities from traffic accidents nationwide was hovering around 10,000 per year, and the number was particularly high in Aichi Prefecture. [...] The UFO traffic lights were adopted for the first time at an intersection in the Osu district in Nagoya's Naka Ward in September 1975. It is busy, and people visit the Osu Kannon temple and the local shopping district.

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