[TShirtRacer]

My name is John Hart, I am a small business owner from North Carolina.  Several years ago I found myself constantly frustrated by wasted time sitting at dumb traffic signals.  I remember thinking, how can we have men on the moon, an international space station, and cars that drive themselves, yet here I sit at an empty intersection waiting on a stupid light to give me the go-ahead because it couldn't see me coming? Countless times I've been in a line of cars at a left turn light, me and 1 or 2 other cars didn't make it through. Then I had to wait for the light to cycle all the way through all the other lanes and come back to me, when if it would have waited a couple extra seconds the turning lane would have cleared. How many of us have been stopped by a traffic signal that was giving a green light to nobody, because the car that triggered the signal is already gone... It turned right on red? Wouldn't it be great if you were approaching an empty intersection in your big heavy Newell and before you even took your foot off the accelerator it gave you a green light because the signal realized there was no cross traffic. You get the idea. 

I researched the topic and found that over a dozen patents had tried to make traffic lights better, but all were based on cameras, and none had been implemented. Nobody had patented a system using Lidar, ultrasonic and other sensors like autonomous cars use to "see" in 3-D.  I run a screen printing and embroidery company so I understand the differences between vector images and raster (bitmaps) along with their computational burdens.  So I set out to design a system of long distance detection (from a mile away, in every direction, including hills, valleys and curves). A system that could identify differing vehicles and anticipate what decisions needed to be made in order to maximize flow through any given intersection in real time. After a few years of work with an electrical engineer friend who specializes in visual recognition software and hardware. we were awarded a patent.  I was so excited. I was going to change the world. I was going to save millions of tons of CO2 emissions and help national productivity. OK, that last one may be a stretch, but it's staggering how much time Americans waste sitting at dumb traffic lights.  My dream is to create a system that piggybacks on existing infrastructure and anticipates the constantly changing needs of traffic flow and adjusts on the fly.  A system that autonomously anticipates how to maximize the flow of traffic through an intersection, instead of reacting after a car rolls over a loop of wire in the road.  
That was 3 years ago...

I've contacted every player that I can find in the traffic light industry.  I don't have the money to fund a start-up but I'm more than willing to sell, license or help develop my system. But all of my e-mails and inquiries have been met with deafening silence.  All of the companies currently in the traffic signal industry are already making money and don't want their industry disrupted, or don't want the legislative trouble to implement a new type of system. Sports teams are using vector based imaging to track pitches, basketball teams use it to capture shooting percentages, several car companies use it for autonomous driving.  Yet every day millions of people waste their lives sitting at intersections because a traffic signal has no way to make decisions concerning flow maximization.  All the technology needed to revolutionize the industry already exists, yet we're forced for now to run over loops of wire buried in the ground.

My question to the Gurus is how I should proceed?  Does the idea simply need exposure through articles or trade publications, if so how do I attract technical writers (none so far will return my emails)?  I don't have the resources to build out prototypes.  I don't think it would behoove me to display at trade shows without one.  I've contacted all those I can find through internet searches as well as several technology freelance writers, but to no avail. 

We've all heard the old Ralph Waldo Emerson adage that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door.  If only it were that easy. All over the world there are ideas that could change our lives for the better, but the world cannot beat a path to something that it doesn't know exists.  Any advice on how to get exposure and how to get the conversation started will be appreciated. Somebody please help me... Daddy needs a Newell