Traffic lights either need to be replaced with humans, or manually operated.

Well blast my horn and call me Chirpy, you've found me out, all the way to the eleventh "ha". However, after reading your arguments, I think even my first paragraph would be enough to win this one (oh snap) but never the less, I suppose I'll still respond. 1 - Time efficiency My opponent argues with a video of a silly-ish police officer directing traffic. After watching it you should notice two things: first, there were no crashes for all his flashy directing. Secondly, traffic went smoothly. His own video is works in my favor. He then shows us pictures were police cars from that happy land of Britain have crashed, sometimes ridiculously. If this is the case, then by his logic, we should remove ALL drivers for instances like these: http://crazycrashes.files.wordpress.com... http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com... http://allworldcars.com... http://www.nascarspace.com... Moreover, this is after they've gone through driving tests to get licenses to drive. All humans can make driving errors, regardless of their job status. Their own ability to drive hardly has a say in how they would simply direct traffic. But if that is a criterion, lets watch a video of how well a computer drives itself shall we? http://www.youtube.com... I think that speaks for itself. Brains beat chips hands down. Computers process numbers, they don't think about them. Until AI is invented, a thinking cops performance would greatly beat that of a traffic lights programming. 2 - Anger Management Of course, someone will have to wait some of the time. However, a cop's ability to think would enable him to make intelligent decisions about when to allow lanes to move. If there's a crowded lane, he lets that go, and when its more straggling cars he lets the next group go while that lane fills again. A light may start to do this, but then they'll make some lanes idle while no one passes, and worst yet, will stop crowds of cars at a good speed to let one car go by when that same car could have easily gone through earlier when there was no one passing it. These stupid errors are wasting the consumer's time and money. Also, I don't see any real threat to this corrupt cops statement. Yeah, there are some bad cops, but then again, there's also corrupt doctors, corrupt politicians, corrupt beekeepers. But for all of those there's even more good ones (well, politicians maybe not, but still). Even if this was viable, think of the complexity and expense. The cop would have to memorize the posh's car, the richer would have to know the cops shifts, and a way to communicate that he's waiting in line, and do this for every cop on his route (so for arguments sake, lets say 16). Each cops minimum salary is about $44000, so it take more than a tenny to make them let something like that slide, especially with the knowledge that if this nefarious scandal was found out, he'd be disbarred and prosecuted himself for taking brides. He wouldn't be willing to risk his neck for anything less than 100-200 quid (or as us Yanks say: bacon). So, this smug mug has to pay each $100 on his route, probably both ways, which is $22,400 for a week, or $1,164,800 a year. A bit pricey for getting though lights a bit early wouldn't you agree? No, I think inefficient lights that cost the driver time and money is a much greater problem then cops slipping in a few bucks on the side. 3 - Saving Gas If lights went in sequence like you say then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is that they very much do not do anything in sequence, or anything else slightly intelligent. Instead they make the driver stop and start continuously, and cause the driver to waste gas trying to get back up to speed to make up for lost time. And I don't know what financial oasis you live in where people can just buy new push button cars, but over here in Normalpeopleville, Rita Receptionist and Joe the Plumber (see what I did with that political reference?) have to live with their key start cars. More often than not they would waste more gas turning their cars off and on than by idling. Even if the turning on and off was more gas friendly, you try making every driver in the world do that, even in this 'greener' age. No, it'd be more economically and fuel friendly just to let the driver drive than have to sit there. A smart traffic cop would allow that, rather than a computer. It's a no brainer, literally. 4 - Creating Jobs If a computers piloting ability is still in question, I'll let you watch that video one more time. No, go ahead I'll wait. Really, it's no trouble. Okay, you saw it? Good. Computers are only calculators with different shells. That plane probably had a complex 'rate of descent' algorithm that is more complex than I'd care to imagine. Nevertheless, it still crashed, badly. A thinking pilot wouldn't have let something like that happen. Likewise, a human cop will also think better than a traffic lights programming, because he can make up for changes, and use eyes and common sense to know when a lane should go and which ones should stop for a bit. Also, I agree a public transport system would be great, but it would be costly, and impractical unless it ran off something besides oil. Also, it has nothing to do with the problem of traffic lights, so moving on. 5 - Screaming Baileys? Please. Go with a tall glass of Captain Morgans spiced rum. Do you got a little captain in you? http://www.remotigue.net... So while I can't promise traffic cops to look like that, my opponent also can't promise to get computers that look like this http://images.epilogue.net... Therefore, we'll have to go on intelligence, in which case, brains will always beat chips. Traffic cops would be far more efficient than the current light system, saving you, yes you, no not Steve, don't look at Steve, what's he got to do with this? But you, Average Driver. Your money, time, and patience is all wasted at the light. Want change? Get Brains. A final example of how aggravating computers can be to people. Just look at this childs reaction, and enjoy http://www.youtube.com...