12-12-2016, Slash Gear -- There are eighty-six seconds before the traffic lights are due to turn from red to green, plenty of time to pull my phone out of my pocket and check Twitter. Fifty-four seconds, and I channel surf on the radio, ignoring the flashing lights and eager billboards of the Las Vegas strip around me. Fifteen seconds, just enough time for a quick gulp of water, and then my hands are ready on the wheel, foot poised on the gas, ready to pull away.

It’s a mighty relaxing way to deal with traffic, and though the shiny new Audi I’m driving doesn’t exactly hurt when it comes to cosseting, it’s the groundbreaking technology baked into this connected car that can really take the credit. Freshly powered-up in Las Vegas, NV, Audi’s Traffic Light Information (TFI) is one of the very first steps down the road of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I). Cars that hold entire conversations with the cities they’re driven in, an encrypted back-channel intended to keep the roads flowing and your blood pressure down.

This isn’t the first time traffic light information has been served up to drivers, but it’s probably the most high-tech. Some countries have timers mounted on the signals themselves; a handful of cities have experimented with (and abandoned) short-range, radio-based systems, the individual lights communicating with compatible cars nearby. There are lifehack-style workarounds, of course, like watching the countdown on pedestrian crossings in the US to figure out when the lights are likely to switch.

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