Urban traffic congestion is seriously harmful, directly causing time delays, energy waste, emission increase, and the living standards reduction of residents. At current cross-road intersection, traffic lights switching time is relatively fixed, the actual situation of traffic jams at intersections occur in bad weather or in the event of a traffic accident. Therefore, this study proposes an adaptive algorithm for multi-directional red light time to ease the traffic congestion at intersections. Using video image processing algorithm to judge road traffic congestion, we set the traffic light time according to road conditions, and design the corresponding control system. Simulation results demonstrate that the traffic efficiency by this proposed adaptive algorithm is higher than that of the traditional traffic light running time control method during the heavy traffic.