TrafficSys: Traffic Light Fault Notification Mobile Application

Traffic light plays an important role in ensuring the safety of road users particularly at road intersections. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure that the traffic light is operational as soon as possible when traffic lights become faulty. Faulty traffic lights may cause inconvenience to motorists and put them in dangerous situations especially during peak hours. When traffic lights are faulty, authorities are notified by motorists who would call or send a text message to the number attached to the faulty traffic lights. There are two problems that were identified in this situation. Firstly, authorities rely on the motorist to report on faulty traffic lights. Thus, the response time of the authorities to react to the faulty traffic light is dependent on the length of time that a motorist responds to a faulty traffic light. Secondly, motorist could have difficulties in describing the fault type and traffic light information due to language or lack of traffic signage. As a result, the traffic light maintenance personnel could have misunderstood the situation. Short messaging service is costly. Furthermore, the text from short messaging service are limited and unable to provide rich information to the authorities. This paper presents the development progress of a proposed traffic light failure notification system called TrafficSys. TrafficSys was developed using the waterfall development methodology. TrafficSys system consists of a mobile application that is used by traffic light contractors and a desktop-based application that is used by traffic light technicians. TrafficSys notifies faulty traffic lights to the users via email through push notification. The content of the email provides information to the users such as location of the faulty traffic light via Google Map and also the fault type. The design of TrafficSys system is simple and minimal. Thus, the results of the usability testing have indicated that TrafficSys is an easy to use system and that the information provided by TrafficSys is clear, understandable and well-organized.