[Bearleener]

Pretty cool, that progress bar!

In Germany the stoplights do the same as in England, they turn red + yellow shortly before they go green. This is important because the stoplight phases in Europe are usually much shorter than in America.
You can tell a stale green by when the pedestrian crosswalk lights in the same direction turn red.

Back in East Germany they used to have timers on the stoplights, but that's one good thing out of the socialist countries that they didn't carry over into capitalism.

The next step would be to have the city publish stoplight information over GPS or something so that your car's navigator can tell you when the next light is gonna turn red or green and what speed you need to maintain to time it properly so that you can roll through on green.

Another option would be inter-car communication so that the cars ahead of you tell yours about red lights or other traffic jams, icy patches, etc.