Smartphone app loads a red light countdown on your dashboard

Have you ever sped through a light turning from yellow to red only to find yourself with a ticket in the mail a few weeks later from a red light camera? If so, then this is for you: There is now an app that informs you when a light is about to turn red and whether your current speed will grant you enough time to make it.

EnLighten, as the new app is called, tracks the status of traffic lights in certain cities, reports how long until the light will turn red or green, and suggests if you can make it through the intersection before the light turns red, all of which can be displayed on your dashboard. For now, the complete in-car package is only available for Apple devices in BMWs with an 8 to 10 inch display.

Since BMW only accounts for two percent of the total new-car sales in the U.S., how does everyone else get it? The standalone app is available for download to all Android and iPhone users, just without the entire in-car package. So if you want it all, better buy a Beemer and an iPhone.

EnLighten supports a growing number of cities including Walnut Creek, CA, Salt Lake City, Provo, and Ogden, UT, Portland, and the greater Las Vegas area, with more than “10,000 lights in over 100 cities and towns.”

The app has more features than you’d expect, including an audio alert to indicate when the upcoming signal will change or when the light turns green, as well as turn-signal-dependent information in case you approach an intersection with a separate green arrow and timer, status of the next traffic light (green, yellow, or red), and lastly, a recommendation to either keep going or slow down if you won’t make the light.

EnLighten may also be used as an enforcement tool for police down the road, as it can warn another driver if someone using the same app has ran a red light. What’s more, the app can also save you fuel; If you know ahead of time that you are not going to make the light, then you can slow down and coast in, saving some gas, rather than maintaining speed and coming to an abrupt halt. EnLighten claims to save up to 5% of fuel for drivers using the app.

All of this sounds enticing, so hopefully other car models will take on the idea. The American dream is to have a car that does almost everything for you, and BMW and Apple now recognize that.

Via Extreme Tech