LED lights are great. They produce plenty of light without all that annoying waste heat. They also produce plenty of vehicular collisions when you stick them in traffic lights and those lights later get caked with nice, sticky snow.

Today’s LED traffic lights are rated at just 10-25 watts — compared to 175-plus for their predecessors. Years after the first LED signals were rolled out, some cities (like my former stomping ground of Cleveland) still haven’t figured out that the changeover means you’re going to run into some problems when inclement weather comes to town.

Cleveland’s drivers have been dealing with plenty of signal confusion this winterthanks to the LED lights. It’s not really the lights‘ fault, of course. They’re doing their job, which is creating light and reducing energy use. The real problem is that no one had the foresight to equip the signals with any sort of heating mechanism that could clear the snow.

Such systems do exist, and have for a few years. At the University of Michigan, a team of engineering students developed a signal lens heater that only fired up when the conditions required back in 2011. And even at 49 watts, it still represents a significant energy savings over last-gen traffic lights — especially since it only needs to activate when snow is detected.

We use LED traffic lights in Canada without any issues. I notice that the traffic lights in the photos show that the cylindrical cover goes all the way around, whereas in Canada the bottom is cut out so that snow can't accumulate in it.

Fama Traffic (Chevy Light ) is a high-tech private enterprise devoted to R&D and production of a wide range of Traffic Signal , including LED Traffic Signal, Pedestrian Lights, Traffic Countdown and Intelligent Traffic Controller of different Specifications.Exported to 150+ Countries, Over 20000 LED Traffic Light Projects completed; Winning the title of the top thirty Chinese intelligent traffic equipment suppliers. www.ledtrafficlight.cn