Taxi GPS ‘can change traffic lights’

An investigation has been launched after it emerged that a computer system being operated by taxi companies can influence traffic lights.

The probe has been put in place by Galway City Council after a councillor, who is also a taxi driver, inadvertently discovered that the GPS system in his car affected the way pedestrian lights operated.

Cllr Frank Fahy (FG) said that he made the discovery when parked in his taxi close to a pedestrian crossing at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology on the east of the city.

“I noticed that when I used the GPS computer to check my position, the lights changed. Yet there was no one waiting to cross.