X-Mailer: m, by Cameron Simpson In-Repy-To: <5tg901$9d9@ephor.tusc.com.au> from group aus.motorcycles by shawn@tusc.com.au (Shawn Foo) on 21 Aug 1997 12:26:09 +1000 Subject: Re: traffic lights Newsgroups: aus.motorcycles References: <5tg901$9d9@ephor.tusc.com.au> From: Cameron Simpson Reply-to: cs@zip.com.au Errors-to: cs@zip.com.au Return-receipt-to: cs@zip.com.au Organization: Canon Information Systems Research Australia, Sydney, Oz shawn@tusc.com.au (Shawn Foo) writes: | I was wondering (I know I shouldn't, but I can't help myself), | Has anyone ever had problems triggering the sensors for traffic lights? yes. | Seeing that they work by an inductive coil which is supposed to sense | a lump of metal passing over the top, Ferrous metal, at that... | do they always work well for bikes? Not always. It's usually a tuning problem - they can be tuned to trip for push bikes but often they don't trip for motor bikes. The usual practice is to make a point of pulling up directly along one of the line visible in the road surface, often effective. A word to your local council should get someone out to fix it if it's consistently useless. Fall back approaches include: - Push the pedestrian button in the appropriate direction. This has two pitfalls: you have to leave your vehicle to do it (or ride on the median or footpath). This is illegal, but if nobody's about who cares? Do be sure that there are no approaching vehicles, so you or your bike don't get run down. Secondly, there are some lights, escpecially right-turn lanes, where the pedestrian button trips the cycle but not the right-turn portion (since the sensor clear shows no vehicle queued!; there's an intersection near Cronulla which had this annoying characteristic. - Wait for a car to arrive. - Hop off the bike and push it as though you were a pedestrian, across the pedestrian walk area, in concert with the pedestrian button. - Turn around and go another way. - Run the red, carefully. Illegal, perhaps. Foolish in the presence of other traffic and/or red light cameras (which may not trip, as I think they're tripped by the same sensor which isn't sensing you). There are places where a dysfunctional stop light is permitted to be treated as a sign, and failing to trip in the presence of a motorbike is dysfunctional. I don't know if this is the case in NSW. Anyone? Of course, you've then to argue the case in court if caught. Cheers, - Cameron Simpson, cs@zip.com.au, DoD#743 http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/ -- Too young to rest on the weekend, too old to rest during the week. - Mark Randol