You know the ones – the lights that are supposed to be triggered by sensing a car waiting. Not a bad idea in itself, but if you’re on a motorcycle at the light, shut the bike off and have a snooze because the light will never fucking change! Even two bikes side by side won’t do it. So I’ve had to treat them like stop signs and (carefully) run the red on more than one occassion. Just waiting to get hauled into court on that one.
—Relic
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2009.
Reposting bitches now are we? Be more creative Relic!
read the post from the other day about bikers and it will explain about the bike sweet spot.
That bitch was about bicycles, this one’s about motorbikes. Yes, I’ve run a few reds on my way to work in the wee hours of the morning (no, I’m not the OP either).
The solutions presented in the prior bike bitch were,
– Find the sensor’s “sweet spot”. Easier said than done here, but it’s marked in other cities.
– Place a few neodymium (sic?) magnets on your underside at least 2 inches in diameter. These can be had from Lee Valley.
What they should do is make it legal for motorcycles to treat red lights as four way stops. In Tennessee, it’s legal for motorcycles to go through red lights as long as they stop first (thus treating them like a stop light) because they have the same problem there. The motorcycles are too light to trigger the lights to change. Common sense dictates that if the motorcyclist isn’t serious enough to respect the light and stop, then they’re just asking to be t-boned.
there are no smart traffic lights. no censors. they run on a timer. thats a myth, just like big foot, and responsible government.
Hey Raf, By the way some traffic lights do have weight censors underneath them, not all but some do….NO MYTH….But beleive what you want…And yes some do run off timers as well…
The road does not have a “scale” at the stop line.
Do you have any idea how expensive and unpractial that would be. roads, and paved intersections are built before the lights are put up. tell me then how your scale ends up down there under the road. The lights run on a central timer, lights do not change when you arrive at an intersection.
Rafiki, some lights are run on a timers and others are run off of pressure sensors, not scales. They don’t bury scales in the ground. All they have to do is put in a couple of pressure sensors that “tell” the stop light to change if there’s a car there or not. I believe they use strain gauges, but I’m not 100% sure. To efficiently move traffic, more intersections are designed with these pressure sensors. Why change the light based on an inefficient timer when there’s no need to change the light if there’s no traffic in the perpendicular direction?
Motorcycles aren’t heavy enough so the sensors do not realize a vehicle is there. That’s the reason why in Tennessee, it’s legal for motorcycles to go through red lights, as long as they treat them as a 4 way stop first before proceeding though.
Traffic light sensors are NOT based on weight.
There’s a little coil of metal running under the asphalt; it has an electric charge running through it, and as a metal object passing over it, it senses the change in magnetic flux. (Like the metal detectors at the airport.)That sensor triggers computer to change the light.
Usually you can see a little patch that the wire is beneath, because they cut the wire into the asphalt.
Try to pass across that patch, but not too slowly or it won’t sense a change in magnetic flux. Tie wrapping magnets to the underside of the bike will work, but keep them well away from your electronics.
The problem is that the city hires some dumbass contractor (Black and ____) who don’t bother to calibrate the sensor correctly, probably because they get paid whether they install it correctly or not.
Sailor – THANK YOU FOR SAYING IT!
If you two who are arguing had read the other post about this exact same thing. It started off about bikes, but motorcycles have the same problem so they were mentioned as well – that being a low magnetic signature compared to cars – thus not triggering the MAGNETIC sensors at lights.
Thanks LL I thought thats what I read too. I don’t drive or bike yet so I didn’t care to look it up or debate it. lol
LOL. Bikes suck! Drive a real car.