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Traffic Light Control For The Masses
uniformed1 writes "Eliminating red lights along the routes of their vehicles can give
emergency response teams the few extra critical minutes that can save
lives and property. A front page article
in today's Detroit News details
the emerging problem with a device that is now being made available to
the public -- a traffic light changer. Originally intended only
for emergency vehicles, the $300 MIRT (mobile infrared transmitter)
emits an infrared beam that signals traffic signals to turn green and
gives the vehicle the right-of-way. It is only a matter of time
before self-centered drivers start using the devices widely to skirt
traffic congestion, which is creating fears that chaos will
ensue." Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections.
It couldn't be to hard to hack together one of these could it?
What idiots make these things???
Oh well, what the hell...
Slashdotters could get laid.. since now everywhere can be the red light district!
Years ago, there were instructions online on how to create one of these yourself. All you have to do was figure out the timing of your cities traffic lights. I'd never waste 300 dollars just to get through a traffic light 30 seconds faster.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
Haven't these things been advertized in the back of magazines for years?
Wide spread caos is sure to ensue. At least when emergency vehicles do this, they are automatically responsible for all wrecks it causes. The civilian user will have no such responsibility, and will be very hard to catch. But satan help you if you are caught with one.
Well, my town has 5 stoplights, so I'm probably safe. But I'd hate to still be living in DC :-P
Wait... that sounded a lot like "As long as the landfill isn't in MY backyard."
hmm.
R-
Hard loop..... huh?
Dynamic Designs
www.themirt.com has a lot of info on these devices. Even a dealer list of where to get one. Man, I'm tempted...
-mikey
"The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"
One thing to do, then, would be to change the behavior of the traffic lights so that on receiving this signal, they go to four-way red. Since emergency vehicles can run red lights, it doesn't stop them, while simultaneously deterring civilians from using them.
(The trouble is the lack of feedback. You'd need some kind of indication that the other ways had gone to red before the ambulance driver will have confidence going through the intersection at full speed)
That mother****** cut my beam off!
IR guided Maverick anti tank missiles mounted on traffic light poles. Bet those suckers shut off their IR transmitter then!
Beep beep.
You know there is no accounting for usage! And think of how many places are still installing them...got to get me one of these!
Blar.
Um, if everyone had one of these, wouldn't that be the same as when noone had these? How would it choose one holder over another? It probably wouldn't.
Why are these devices not illegal? Seems to me that the intersection should take a picture of the vehicle using the device... if there aren't flashing lights, send a ticket in the mail.
Once people know that they will be fined, they will stop using it. If you can't deal with red lights, then don't drive.... it's part of the agreement that we all agree to live by when driving (aka "the law"). These rules are there to make driving safer for everyone.
The specs have been out on how to build these things for years. Never caught on, maybe because they felt like the whole beige/black/red/blue box phenomenon. MAYBE if they start showing up in places like Best Buy it will catch on, but even still, I doubt it. Besides, I asked some EMTs/the driver one time if the light at the intersections would benefit them by this light predetermination technology. They said no. Doesn't matter because people still run the yellow and red lights so they still have to slow down. And this was for a signal 100 ft. from the station driveway.
I concede that yes, it may help in congested downtown areas like LA or NY, but in 95% of the U.S. they either aren't installed or useful enough to justify their cost.
BTW, it's just a pre-canned, encoded signal on a fixed carrier wave over an infrared signal. Think "really powerful remote control" for you newbies.
Professor Frink: "We studied traffic patterns and found that drivers move the fastest through yellow lights, so now we just have the red and yellow lights, mm-haiai."
Lenny [flooring it]: "Stay yellow! Stay yellow!"
Long ago (late 1980s), when I was was taking learn-to-drive classes, the textbook listed the fines you could get for different traffic offences.
Unauthorized use of a traffic light changing device was a serious offence. At the time, I thought, since it's illegal to use such a device, these devices must exist. I always wondered how these devices worked and how I could buy/borrow/steal/build one...
And this device is for the person who doesn't want to play by the rules. Just like radar detectors.
The only time an ambulance driver goes full-speed through an intersection with the siren screaming and cars breaking left and right is in the movies. In real life, they slow down and approach the intersection with all the care appropriate to one who's about to violate the traffic pattern. Because, after all, it doesn't help the dying guy in the back if the ambulance gets in an accident on the way to the ER.
Once again humans proove that we are not worthy of the praise we give are self. The dollar society has failed again. The nuclear winter is imminent.
We studied the traffic patterns and found that drivers move the fastest through yellow lights. So now, we just have the red and yellow lights.
$cat
Well, if every car had one of these devices, the traffic lights could be programmed to switch intelligently based on the approaching traffic.
I hate late at night, when the lights green as no one is going through, and then just as a few cars get to the light it turns red even though there are no cars waiting to go the other way, and then when a car finally approaches, the light turns back. What a waste. Some lights have pressure sensors, but they only can tell if cars are currently waiting. Something that could tell the light when traffic was approaching, how far back it was and how heavy it was, we could have much better traffic lights.
We've had these little devices on the streets of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the surrounding Metro areas for about 7 or so years now.. They're little sensors that (i believe) get activated by the lights on emergency vehicles.
No, not at all. In fact, it would be much worse. The lights are supposed to be timed so a batch of cars can travel through most of the stoplights on a main street without having to stop if everyone is traveling the speed limit. Every car having one of these would mean that the lights would cycle on and off much more quickly meaning you would be stopping at every light in the city.
The arseholes who use these will end up getting broadsided by motorists who aren't expecting the sudden light change, then bleed to death waiting for an ambulance to arrive, impeded by all the other grief players.
What were you expecting?
Kind of reminds me of this article
two people, one for east/west, one for north/south. They keep changing back and forth and back and forth. Major traffic problem.
-Tim Louden
The real problem is the brain dead "security through obscurity" mindset of the municipal administrators who allowed the receivers to be purchased with public money without demanding that the manufacturers build in a decent access control mechanism.
I think the idea was that mass dueling transmitters might be smarter than weight sensors or cameras. I see this, however, as a perfect case study for the Tragedy of the Commons.
All's true that is mistrusted
Um... if it has a range of 1500 ft., people would activate it at 1500 ft, it would get trumped at 1499 ft, so they'd activate it at 1498 ft... you get the picture. In short, there'd be two people hurdling toward each other, hoping that the light would stay on their side.
#define DRM chmod 000
Sign in front of the driveway of firehouse in my old city
"Please do not block these doors, we may be going to you house"
Anyone who is using one of these to get through a red light should be lit on fire and left in the middle of the intersection. Lets see how long it takes the ambulance to get there navagaing the traffic gridlock these people cause.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections.
Traffic lights can be a pain sometimes. How many times have you been the only car stopped at a clear intersection, and the light didn't turn green until the light directing the other road had stopped someone? Being able to control the traffic light at an empty intersection would be nice. Maybe these things could be modified such they only work at certain times of the day when there is little or no traffic. 50 people simeultaniously trying to change the light would only cause havoc.
The World is Yours.
1. There's an awfull lot of cameras at intersections these days. (and not just red light still cameras either, where I am there's a few vid cams at every major intersection).
2. IR shows up on B&W CCD cameras.
1+2 = just have someone watch vids for cars that have bright IR pulses coming from the dash.
3 ????
4. Profit
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
Indeed, as one commentator noted, this device was imagined, if not implemented, by the phone phreaks, and was named the "Chrome Box" - just a bit of a tidbit from my misspent youth!
eikimartinson.com
Many temporary traffic lights in the UK operate a slightly different, but equally hackable, system. There's a simple (no doubt cheap) light sensor that detects the vehicle's flashing light. If you get to one of these lights when it's read (and there are no cars in front of you) it only takes a little practice to get them to change by flashing your headlights at it.
You can tell the ones this will work on as they have a small black box on the stalk with a smooth side facing the approaching traffic.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
This kind of thing strikes me as the real-world equivalent of exploiting an unsecured software backdoor. You are, in effect, "hacking" the streetlight network. Hmm... sounds like a good book title. ;-) I'm not sure I buy into the "chaos will ensue" hype. There are European cities that use similar devices (though, with different technologies) to allow public transit to get through traffic quickly, to advocate leaving your car at home. But that's where control over lights should lie: with the appropriate authorities.
Why do these lights exist? To solve traffic problems. They do this by effectively "controlling" drivers. If the traffic authorities decide that it is beneficial to give the priority to emergency vehicles and public transit, so be it. I feel that this is beneficial to society. But when drivers force the system to obey their wishes, they are circumventing the apparent benefits of such a system, putting themselves before society. IMHO, this is wrong.
I'm waiting for the first case to go to trial. Think it'll be seen as the equivalent of running a red light, or gaining unauthorized access to a network?
There are sensors on the top of traffic lights in the UK that respond to headlights.
If an ambulance is approaching lights on red he can flash his full beams a few times and the sequence changes.
I use this feature all the time at the lights near my house, especially late at night when the deafult sequence on the lights is to stay green for the main road all the time unless a car approaches on the minor road.
If you've been paying attention every time DRM or RIAA/MPAA come up for discussion. There's no decent access control mechanism that can not be broken by someone who wants what you got. People brag about that fact. The security isn't obscure. It's more, security based on the honor system. The information on how it works is easily available.
Sitting at a redlight with no other traffic around and your thinking to yourself why their has been no technological advance in traffic lights. Or how about hitting 4 red lights within 100 yards and seeing little if any traffic for the oncoming. Doesn't that just piss you off ?
If this product makes traffic routing more efficient and brings it to the 21st century then I am all in favor !!!!
Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections.
How "smart" would it be to have 28 vehicles and an ambulance all approaching a four-way, urban intersection with these devices fighting to get the green light? It would serve you right to be the heart attack victim in that ambulance as it sat there in gridlock.
If you want to think stupid things, go ahead, but don't encourage your fellow idiots to do something that could kill innocent people.
GPS + small network Fire truck gets tracked by traffic computer, lights along route change as needed. Of course, I'm sure that city planners would manage to screw this up (using an unencrypted WiFi connection on emergency vehicles, turning your local wardriver into Mercurius, God of Traffic). Still it sounds smarter than a laser with thirty seconds of warning. (San Diego drivers know how long people will continue pushing through an intersection for.)
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
I've worked for several ambulance companies and spent a good amount of times in cities on the east coast, and I have never seen an ambulance with this device installed.
On top of that, traffic regulations technically require ambulances to stop at red lights and proceed through after the've verified that traffic is stopped. I think the siren would be more effective than a sudden red light.
Maybe I can see a use for turning it green, as it would help get the traffic in front out of the way, give them space to pull over, but for this to work, they'd have to activate it from a distance. Since IR isn't focused like a laser, I doubt it would work from a great distance.
I guess the slashdot editors editors weren't too into the hacking/phreaking scene back in the day. This was documented some 10 years ago.
If you want proof, consult the google time machine. Scroll down or search for "Chrome Box".
Frank Carrier, the 3M dealer, says that's only fair. If Gow wants to compete, he should create his own system, including a receiver that can be locked as well, Carrier said. Providing only a transmitter as his business is parasitic, he said.
Did no one else notice this quote, that no one should be building third party attachments to systems?
Here is some more information with pictures of the Optocom sensors (mounted to the signals) and of EMS and Fire transmission units.
Motorcycles. Generally I cannot trigger a light change to save my life, so I sit there like an idiot waiting for a car to come up behind me and hopefully get close enough to trigger it for me. Especially annoying at intersections where one must wait for a green arrow to turn left. Still though, I do not believe that is enough of a problem to warrant the general public getting these.
The idea of non emergency people having these is insane. And you know it is going to be the H2 driving, cell phone yapping, news paper reading, oblivious to the world around them group that will absolutly HAVE to have these. I mean my god, I have to get to my office to start on today's fancy bookeeping and intern bonking, RIGHT THIS MINUTE! Damn all these plebes and their "right of way" nonsense, can't they see I'm more important?
Damn I'm bitter today.
Finkployd
Not all uses of this are for evil. What if you're driving around at night and you encounter a light with no-one around? Is it really so wrong to turn the light then, since it affects no-one else and can save you a a minute or two (or five, depending on the light). Especially since there is no law against it at all (which is the sticking point for many people harping on obeying the speed limits). There is no safety problem with running a red light at night if you have good visibility in all directions, and in fact this device makes such a move safer for everyone.
I have to admit though that the temptation to use it for evil (at lights during the day when lots of cars around) would be very hard to resist.
I also wonder what happens if multiple people really starting using them, what happens when two people going different directions request a green? Perhaps it reverts to normal behavior, in which case many users would cancel each other out (but effecting emergency traffic, which is really bad).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Preemption-equipped traffic signals that are programmed to only respond to custom-encoded preemption transmitters will not work with any MIRT product at this time. However, the actual percentage of preemption-equipped intersections that only respond to custom-encoded transmitters is very small.
If this becomes more common, how long do you think it will take cities to custom encode their receivers?
I wonder what this "encoding" is. Since the car is described as transmitting an IR strobe, I assume it's a simple pattern or a specific frequency...?
Ye Gods, NO! It's taken city planners decades to install and tweak centrally controled lights so that traffic flows. Now assholes will come along and make EVERYONE wait when they disrupt a flow that's been synchronized to minimize group time spent. You might as well request additional traffic accidents. People here are polite compared to other places and wait their turn when the lights go out, yet the delay is awful. Things were just starting to work where I lived. Polling systems that simply count cars won't work. It would take enourmous computing power to adjust the flow programs bassed on traffic. That's worth persuing, but boxes that flip the switch should earn the user a heafty ticket. I can just imagine the kinds of nimrods who will use this. Uhg, we have set up a system of privalidge (that's Frech for privat law, Gus) that will be abused. I hate it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Needless to say common sense got the better of me and I realised that another line of work was called for. Driving by intimidation "me first" is for assholes not pros. Emergency vehicle drivers need to be given the right of way PERIOD. This law cannot change, otherwise the carnage of today will be nothing compared to what will happen with assholes using this device.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
[nt]
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Am I the only one who thinks citizens of a society should cooperate instead of going, "me first! me first!" all the time?
[o]_O
Comeon guys, this is old. There have been box plans out that are based on a strobe light from radio shack for over a decade? Two decades? Now. Get with the program. You don't need to buy one of these from the company - they shouldn't even be allowed to sell you one. It's trivial to make one.
What you may not be aware of though, is that at least in Canada - sometimes these devices are programmed to turn ALL the lights red, so the EV can quickly get through the intersection. Won't help you with your daily commute any.
Messing with emergency vehicle service is not cool. Spend your time making life difficult for the phone company, or something..
..don't panic
Some of these cities already have smarter traffic lights: the FAST-TRAC system, which uses cameras to monitor the traffic flow, and adjust the lights' timing accordingly.
Im still not really sure if this is true or not, but a friend of mine told me once that if you flash your lights (high beam low beam high beam) like 4 times quickly at traffic lights, they beleive its the spinning light on emergency vehicles and will let you though. Of course I am in Austalia, and this guy isnt a real good source of information. However, every so often I do this and it works (Ie i do not go onto the pad's yet, and I can see the other lights go from green to red around me)
"Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections."
Maybe if everybody drove the speed limit they'd synchronize with the timers in the traffic lights and not get stopped by a red light to begin with.
(It also provides the enjoyment of sailing past the Honda weed-eaters, the ones that just had to hurry up and beat everybody else to the next red light.)
I'd be hiding behind the trash can on the curb changing the light red every time I saw a pedestrian who wanted to cross.
Tee hee hee!
Should be the penalty for having one of these in your car. Period. Your talking about people DYING here, maybe you or someone you love... Take anyones license for 5 years mandatory if they are caught with one.
Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections.
Yes, because if everyone had one of these, everyone would press their buttons as they approach the intersection. Then you'd have detectors that worked out when you were approaching an intersection and automatically enable the changer. Then you'll have people souping up their light-changers to emit a higher-powered beam and drown out all those around it.
So eventually authorities will HAVE to upgrade all the traffic signals in the country so stop the madness.
If they replaced every intersection with a traffic circle, traffic would flow much better. The only problem would be that americans would need to be taught how to drive first.
I build a few of these about 8 years ago for maybe $60.00 total in parts. So slow is the common end user.
EOU
It might be easier to change the light by getting out and pressing the walk button on the sidewalk.
Although I lived almost three years in Northern California and disliked the place as a whole, the one thing that did stand out is the outstanding traffic control system with optical and pavement vehicle sensors. The volume of traffic notwithstanding, it was the fairest traffic systems I've ever seen.
For example, if there are left turn lanes on opposing lanes at an intersection, and one of those lanes is empty but the other is full, when the lights turn green the left turn lane for the empty lane stays red and simultaneously turn the signal green for opposing straight-through traffic. Not only that, but the left turn signal would only stay green until the last car had cleared or until a maximum time interval elapsed, at which point it would turn red again and allow opposing straight-through traffic to flow. In fact, if there was no waiting straight-through traffic in the one direction, some lights would just stay green for the lanes that had it until a car attempting to cross the intersection would trigger a timer.
Contrast this with, say, Edmonton, Alberta's dreadful traffic system, where nearly everything is on straight timers save for buses with road sensors and emergency vehicles, and there are no timing lights for freeway on-ramps. There are some sensors at some intersections, but by and large nearly everything is timed and it creates frustration and accidents. It's doubly ironic considering that Edmonton has the highest density of traffic lights in North America and traffic circles on major roadways!
In other words, if you design your traffic system the right way the first time, devices like this become unnecessary. An economist once commented that traffic lights are a nearly perfect unbiased system for resolving conflict. Why create bias in favor of certain selfish individuals? It doesn't work in economies, and it doesn't work on roadways.
I'm fairly sure that almost every traffic light that gets a fair amount of traffic in the Ottawa area is already 'smart'. There are sensors embedded in the pavement that detect when there's a large gap in traffic, and the lights change at that time.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
They must be moving awfully slowly if the light changes and they've only moved two feet. Why aren't these people doubling the speed limit like they should be?
It will create congestion, as drivers on minor streets prioritize themselves ahead of the greater traffic on major ones. It will congest the major streets, reducing the efficiency of the overall flow of traffic, and lead to gridlock in barely stable traffic patterns.
The penalty for using one of these should be suspension of driving privilege for 10 years.
Now, how about the street with the 45 mph speed limit, but with traffic lights sprinkled along the way that change from green to red in an instant? There you are, moving along at the posted speed limit when "poof" goes your green light, and you are then approaching the intersection, quickly clamping on the brakes, trying to get stopped without getting rammed from behind, by one of these "1/5 second yellow" lights. Makes you want to send the city a bill for those brake shoes, disks, and tires. I once saw a guy shoot out from a side street when he "suddenly got the green" and get broadsided by another car that couldn't get stopped in time. The next day somebodys lawyers were out there with video cameras taking pictures of these "hair-trigger" lights. Really need to look both ways, even if you have the green...
In some cities, when the signal is received, all the lights turn red. This provides a similar solution, by clearing the intersection completely by stopping all traffic, however in larger cities this is not an option.
Of course, the frequency used is also different in some cities. It won't take to long for these to be made illegal most likely though, and purchasing one is sort of, immoral...
"Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections."
Acrually if everyone had one of these, each person would press it at every intersection. The result is similar to a 4-way stop sign, since the light would change for every car.
Vote for Pedro
The system is called Opticom, patented and manufactured by 3M.
BTW, there is no encoding or carrier. The traffic lights respond to light pulses occuring at a precise frequency (crystal control is generally required). The normal frequency is around 10Hz. An optional frequency around 12.5Hz can also be enabled for giving priority to certain vehicles (ex. police car vs fire truck).
I laugh when I see people trying to flash their headlights to change the light. Won't work because the light pusles have to be fast (< 10uS). A strobe light was the only way to generate it, at least until high-power LEDs and laser diodes became available.
The system is configurable to give a green light to the emergency vehicle (which helps clear traffic) or it can be set to go red in all directions.
Do you network all the boxes and just broadcast a remove code?
I'm assuming that's the way to revoke a leaked key city-wide.
Or do you send out a tech every time someone hacks one box?
Perhaps something in the middle would work: local police and street techs already in the field would broadcast the past months' revocations, and any signal controller they drove by would catch the broadcast.
And what do you do when some l33t hax0r starts sending his, unofficial, broadcasts on that network?
The signal controllers would reject them because they aren't signed with the city street department's heavily guarded key.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is so Phrack #60! Come on, people... get with the times!!!
Phrack's way is far more entertaining, anyways.
We're going to hear a lot of people calling to make these devices illegal- except in the hands of qualified emergency response personnel. We must resist them. Traffic light control is yet another prime target for deregulation and privatization, and keeping these wonderful devices out of the hands of ordinary citizens restricts our liberty to control intersections that we've paid for with our tax dollars.
Competition and free markets make everything better. They work great for companies, which is a strong indicator that they improve everything else, too- like public schools, the electrical power grid, and traffic lights at intersections. Why should emergency response vehicles receive a government-granted monopoly on the control of traffic lights? This is just old-fashioned, socialist thinking. If I want to turn my light green and yours red, and I'm willing to pay money for the privilege, why shouldn't I get the right of way? I've got more discretionary income, which means my time is probably more important than yours anyway. Government should not be standing on our necks and telling us who can and can't control traffic lights. The "invisible hand" can do a better job of guiding traffic through intersections anyway!
I can hear the socialists whining even now. "But what about the poor ambulance and police cars?" they'll say. They're so addicted to government regulation they don't realize how wonderful things would be if it were every man for himself. Hey, why should the government have a monopoly on ambulance service and law enforcement? My Expedition has plenty of room in the back for a heart attack victim or a criminal. If I'm willing to pay the money I should be able to offer a competing emergency response service as I sail through an endless sea of green lights and yap on my cellphone. To argue otherwise is socialist, and we've learned from the fall of the Soviet Union that socialism doesn't work, people.
OK, so it's a cheap shot at you guys. I can't resist- it's so much fun, and you make it so easy!
I can't really see people trying to use this to get to their destination faster.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I remember first hearing about these things about 5 years ago. Back then you had to build them yourself. They were called "Chrome Boxes" along the lines of all of the other phreakers tools. Just a little history.
with the lights after the emergency vehicles pass by... where I live at least. The lights seem to get "stuck" in the cycle and then will sometimes drop parts of the cycle for about 20 minutes (I've waited at a red turn signal for that long while the cross traffic and opposing turn lanes got to go, and yes, I was on the stop bar).
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Unless you have emergency vehicle light and horns this would be useless. The way they are meant to work is to turn the light red in all directions. So you would have to run a red to use the device anyway. Sorry would be hackers the deck is stacked, and those stupid enough to play this game would fare better in Vegas.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
When the article said "changes the light immediately to clear the intersection", I assumed that it meant that the other lights would flip to yellow instantly and then give time for the intersection to clear before flipping the light you just tagged to green. That means the cycles would be at least long enough for a single car to jump through a yellow light. Seems like flipping the light to green would make all the cars waiting in front of the firetruck think they were clear to go. Even for emergency vehicles, this seems too extreme.
Most traffic lights are hooked into the telephone system and use dialtones for configuration. What ever happened to plotting your course and using them? Too hard or expensive?
One can only wonder what playing beethovens 6'th to one of them in dialtones would do....
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Sorry, but this is a total scam, I am the former Supervisor of Electronics and Communications for a large City's Traffic Signal Department and this stuff was my life for 10 years.
Emergency vehicle signal preemtion works in one of three ways... hardware connection from the fire house to the closest signals, RF signal from truck to signal cabinet (would only be on some special routes due to the cost) and magnetic induction loops in the roadbed.
The little periscope looking devices are not infrared detectors. They are vehicle detectors that use microwaves to count the traffic and see how long the cue of traffic is at the signal. That length of cue has an impact on the traffic signal timing ie: cue > 10 cars, change the green until it is 2.
Induction loops are the squares, rectangles and diamond patterns you see in the road (normally in a left turn lane). They are single conductor wire that create an induction coil for detecting the change in magnetic field when a large metalic mass is over top, which then triggers the lights.
A fully pre-emptive signal is not very effective for general use and most City's will only have a percentage of them. With 2000 signals under central control only 100 - 150 would have this type of pre-emption.
You are better off flashing your high beams as you approach a red signal. You get the same placibo effect and you aren't out $300.
Sometimes when she approaches traffic lights late at night when there is no traffic, she flashes them with her lights to change them. She thinks it wakes up the sensor or something. Is this as stupid as it sounds?
It's hurtling. Hurdling is running and jumping.
something from phrack: Traffic lights
I agree that the ideal solution - and indeed, one of my most dreaded lights along the trip home takes, and I have timed it, over three minutes to turn at times. At night they thankfully have a sensor which turns it in under thirty seconds if the coast is clear.
But I'm not sure as a taxpayer that I want to have the cost of sensors like that put into every light everywhere. Instead I would prefer the overly uptight (like myself) pay a bit extra for convenience, instead of everyone paying for them. Since traffic lights are so widespread, stupid and cheap is a better way to make the bulk of them, or at least the ones in more remote areas.
Then again, I suppose building these sensors into lights is also a cost... but since the primary use is for emergency services I am happy bearing that cost. I guess the real thing to do is to make the communication from emergency services and the traffic lights more secure and not accessible to anyone with an IR beamer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
------------
Please let me explain a little about our web site and new product launch campaign.
The web site should be very clear that we are looking for "dealers" to sign up and sell our new product. The site explains who the customers are, and the advantages of our new product.
I am an electrical designer by trade, however the main focus of my business has been the sale and manufacture of firearms and accessories, of which we sell to Law Enforcement, Military and others. The idea for the development for this product came about from discussions I have had with our Law enforcement customers. They provided an explanation that many vehicles in there fleet are not equipped with traffic light preemption, because of the cost. The market is now dominated by 3M Corp. and they sell this technology for up to $5,000 per installation. I have applied my design back ground to offer an affordable solution to this problem.
It took over 2 years of development and testing from outside labs to perfect this product. A substantial investment, in the multiple 6 figures has been expended. So now what do we do to "get the word out" we have several challenges. one is that 3M has factory reps all over the country, and we must establish our own rep network to promote our product. How can this be done? My answer to this was to hire 12 advertising executives with a budget of 100K per month to brand our name, to show our product, and to establish a dealer network quickly to provide maximum market coverage. The first phase was national branding, the second phase will be national TV news and talk shows.
We have a unique product and we need to get the word out.
Now, your view of what my company is doing is to sell to the public, please understand that every effort has been made to qualify what this product does, who will benefit from it and to find individuals interested in selling this item. I have chosen to do this in a bold way, which includes internet exposure to people in the trade (i.e. EMS, Law Enforcement, etc) and also to individuals that are interested in a unique business opportunity.
When something gets advertised on the internet it seems it looses credibility, I understand this and am working hard to redesign the site to overcome this problem.
Back to who we sell to and who we do not sell to. We require a legal agreement signed by a dealer, no one else in this industry requires this, after that we qualify the dealer to make sure we want them to represent this product. We go far beyond what is asked of us to qualify the dealer and NO individuals are allowed to buy this product for there own use. You and I both understand that this is not an option. We will not sell to individuals, even though there is no law preventing a company from doing so. We are trying to launch a truly revolutionary product, much different that what has been on the market for over 25 years. I feel great about this product having designed it myself and understand that it is truly a win solution for all involved. I can feel good knowing that my product will save lives, in two ways, one is that it will secure an intersection making it safer(plenty of stats available on this point from Federal ITC division) and two that it will allow first responders to get to where they need to be earlier than without this technology. For example, a heart attack victim has a diminishing chance of survival for every minute lost in response time.
I'm sorry to make this so lengthily, but I feel a strong need to communicate these points to you, and if you would be kind enough provide me feed back as to where I'm going wrong with my presentation, what, in your mind would communicate this better?
To wrap up, my policy is simple, if a dealer or end user uses this device improperly we will pursue immediate legal action, this cannot be allowed and won't be.
Please respond as I would like your input.
[deleted]
I write code.
has anyone else noticed the slowly increasing amount of trolling going on in the articles?
Comments are supposed to troll, not the parent articles... it takes all the fun away!!!
Make the use by non-EMT/cops/buses subject to a VERY big fine.
Revenue enhancement for locals bay-bee!
back in 1995 i worked in a electronics surplus store and we had a number of people coming in and buying large amounts of IR leds.
finally someone fessed up that they were making beacons...they flashed at a certain rate...10 hz or something...and you got nothing but green lights.
the problem was if you got caught...something like a $500 fine on your first offense and it got steep after that.
that was like 8 years ago.
Tragedy? My first thought was comedy.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
My wife would love this, we have a 5 minute red light at the top of our street, then only 10 seconds for green. She knows the timing in order to get to work on time... lol
Daniel Connor
Here are some of the vehicle traffic laws as they pertain to emergency vehicles here in New York State, other states are mostly similar.
Only police department vehicles are allowed to proceed through red lights without stoping.
EMS and Fire trucks have to make a full stop at every red light while going lights and sirens to a job, regardless of the priority.
In reality, I slow down significantly and roll through at a cool 3-5mph.
Lights and sirens for EMS and fire are a courtsesy. The guy in front of you is in now way obligated to blow a red light for you if he feels it's unsafe for him to proceed. Oh, and btw, if a medic or emt gets on the P.A. and tells you to cross a red light, and you get into and accident, the medic is at fault for the acccident.
Going down one way streets and driving on the opposite side of the road are allowed, with the understanding that you do so at reduced speed and with extreme caution, any accident in this situation is all on your shoulders.
Here in Manhattan, slow and steady is the best way. You can't justify injuring bystanders for someone who is already sick.
And with critical patients in the back, you'll drive even slower to the hospital 'cause there's alot of things that we need to that can't be done if you're bouncing around the back cab like a virgin's first visit to some Panamanian wha wha rumphouse.
These device have been mentioned here in the city, and it was agreed that it would cuase more confusion and possibly more liability for the city than it's worth.
--
I for one welcome our new traffic-light-changing overlords.
Ron Paul 2012
First, it didn't always work. Those sensors are positioned to see the pulsing signal from a light on top of a tall vehicle, like an ambulance or fire truck. He had an ordinary car which meant it was a lot lower than it should be. The sensors seem to have a cone-shaped sensitive area which obviously narrows you approach the intersection. So as he got closer to the intersection, where the weaker light might have a chance, he'd usually be outside the sensitive cone shape.
Second, it was hard to tell when it was working. We did get what seemed like an unusually large number of green lights... but it was hard to tell if the "go box" was triggering them, or if we were just getting lucky. In several cases, traffic was also flowing through the intersection the other way which meant it hadn't done anything. Apparantly, the lights turn red in all other directions.
However, we did approach one intersection where there was absolutely no doubt it worked. The light was green, turned yellow, and then turned green again. That absolutely never happens under normal circumstances, and when I saw that I knew it did indeed do something. This interection was approaching the crest of a small hill, and it was complex with five streets (one at a funny angle). As we got closer, the light must have bounced off something else, because the obviously unnatural green light we got turned yellow briefly and then red. I don't know what the drivers saw in the other four directions approaching the interestion, but they must have seen something equally strange, because we sat there for a LONG time as did the cars in coming from the other directions. NOBODY was willing to drive into that interestion, because it was obvious to all the cars that the light was screwed up somehow. That's something that virtually never happens. Traffic lights are incredibly reliable (must not be running Microsoft's products). And when confronted with a screwed up light, nobody was willing to be the first to risk driving into the intersection, even as the controller recovered and started it normal sequence giving green lights. After about 10 minutes, people started to believe a green really was safe and we got to move forward. This was during rush hour on a very busy 4-lane road... so it must have caused quite a bit of traffic backup.
Anyway, my friend's "go box" (as he called it) eventually stopped working. It was home made and it used massive power to turn on those LEDs. They were probably running many times over their rated current. He couldn't turn the switch on too long or it'd blow the fuse to his cigarette lighter. Apparantly he'd replaced the normal fuse with 30 amps which allowed it to run for a minute or so. The wires and everything else about it got really hot. So it's no wonder it stopped working after a while. He talked a few times about building a bigger and better one... but ultimately it was not worth the effort. It couldn't reliably trigger most of the lights. He had many other stories of turning a light green and being stuck behind someone who'd just stopped and wasn't paying attention to the light because it wasn't expected to turn green again for a while. He used to joke "you really also need the lights and siren to make the other cars get out of your way".
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
An interesting link about traffic patterns: http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
1. Do what the military does, strobe the lights in a morse code fashion. Assign a seperate code to each city vehicle that needs to use the system. Any vehicle not strobing a proper code gets no joy.
2. retrofit traffic light camera's to snap pictures of the traffic when the system is activated. Remove the infrared filter from the camera and the camera will easily and plainly show the vehicle that is attempting to open the intersection. You get a picture of the perp and his license plate, plus the light will be plainly visible to the camera. Perfect evidence for a court case.
If the system is coded and someone attempts to copy the codes then they can prosecute them for hacking into a governemnt computer system.
After all, the traffic lights are computer controlled, they should not be accessible to the public and if you hacked the system via the Internet it would be your nuts on the chopping block.
"It's called Napster because Sean stole it from me while I was sleeping"
All your base are belong to us!
Perhaps some day I will live in a place that actually times the lights instead of having them be a mess. One local road - if you miss one light, you are stopped at EVERY light for ten miles even if you go the speed limit or a bit under. It's really frustrating to just miss twenty lights in a row and have to wait a few minutes for each. I don't mind going whatever speed is necessary to make all the lights (being a big fan of not stopping even if it means going a bit slow) but in practice almost never have I encountered lights that are well programmed.
In order not to miss a light at the road I mentioned, you must go at least five miles over the limit. Then you make every light, and get to the end of the road about fifteen minutes faster than if you miss any of the early lights. Add that time out over a round trip, and it's definitely worthwhile. Who would not have an extra half hour - especially for a commute where you get 1/2 hour extra every day?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you had each traffic light detect how many people each direction were using those things, and let it take a poll, then it could change according to how many people were waiting at the light. Then you would get smart intersections that favor the side with the most cars. Of course, that would require installing some sort of software in the lights.... But hey, eventually you could just build them into cars and then the city could network where all the traffic is and truely coordinate the lights. That would be sweet...
That's how I've heard this system operates (at least in Seattle)...strobe light gives "all-stop" at the signal. From where I heard this, it was done deliberately to avoid this type of stunt with the strobe light on civilian vehicles. This is also the safest option too, as emergency vehicles are trained to run red lights (after slowing and checking) and go around stopped vehicles. "All Red" also gives the emergency vehicles the clearance to use the opposing lanes and any other clear space in the intersection etc, coupled with the fact that at any intersection, you ONLY want the emergency vehicles moving...no others.
Any system that creates "green" for the person with the strobe is, in my opinion, an inherently dangerous system. It encourages people to try this kind of stuff and makes people think that the ambulance or fire-engine behind them "won't mind if I go through too". The more moving vehicles there are, even if they're with the flow of the emergency traffic, the more dangerous.
I can't imagine this system staying like it is for too long.
How about tracking the emergency vehicles through GPS, then having the central traffic computers switch the lights around the emergency vehicle (far ahead) in such a way as to clear the path 2 blocks away and keep all opposing traffic off the intended path. For instance, lanes turning away from the path would be allowed to turn green so the vehicles could clear the area, lanes crossing would be halted 1 or 2 blocks away, and lights behind the emergency vehicle would stay red for some reasonable period of time to keep the lawyers a reasonable distance from the ambulances...most people wouldn't even see the emergency vehicles, as they would be sitting at a red light 1 or 2 blocks away, or simply shunted away from the path, and the ambulance/fire-truck driver would not even have to contend with stopped or moving traffic.
This isn't too much to put on one of those little PLC traffic computers, and it would be a lot better than "strobe light gets the green" solution that these people thought up.
This is fairly old news. I remember reading about these devices in the Chicago Tribune over a year ago. There is a little more info here. I don't know what the current status of it is in Illinois, though. Hell, Chicago cops will take you out and beat you for a lot less, so use at your own risk.
Most traffic light sensors these days use a combination of infrared and visible light strobes, as well as encryption, to signal the light to change. These infrared emitters wouldn't do anything . Check out 3m Opticom system for more information.
...everyone will just install flashing lights!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
It's not legal for "induhviduals" to own these.
TT
I remember reading about this tech as it was first appearing. Comments about using an ordinary camcorder to see the infrared emitted or even modifing a learning remote and hanging out near fire houses or intersections to grab the code.
I Don't Work Here
The traffic light control system itself is called Opticom . It is patented and manufactured by 3M.
It operates using very short pulses of light (< 10uS) occuring at a precise frequency (usually crystal controlled). The normal pulse rate is about 10Hz. An optional rate of around 12.5Hz can be used to give priority to other vehicles (ex. ambulance vs firetruck).
The system is configurable and normally set to give a green light to the emergency vehicle (helping to clear traffic) but it can also be set to go red in all directions.
Seriously, someone should show this to the Japanese government. Then maybe they'll come up with a solution to their abominable management of traffic.
The Japanese have this habit of being extremely friendly when they're in direct contact with other humans, but once they're in a consequence-free environment (such as the little bubbles of their tiny, ridiculous cars) they become relatively indifferent to people around them (just like Americans!)
The most bizarre illustration of this phenomenon is their behaviour in the presence of Emergency vehicles - they ignore them completely. I was walking home from work one day and an ambulence - sirens, bells, loudspeakers and all - happened to be travelling along the same route. The traffic was so relentless and the people were so stubborn that I was able to walk faster than it moved. I heard the sirens pass by my apartment five minutes after I got there.
POINT BEING, maybe they should just equip ambulences with RPG launchers or anti-matter cannons or something - that would certainly clear the way.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
...would be making a remote control which turns all the lights at an intersection green. *raise pinky to mouth*
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Well at least in my town (wilmette, IL) and most cities in the Chicagoland area, there are strobe light detectors and a white flood that will light and change the traffic light green when an emergency vehicle approaches the intersection because of a strobe light blinking at a specific frequency usually mounted on the front of a ambulance, fire engine, etc. .... I can just image people's excuse.... "Officer we where just having a disco party in the car" :o)
It's not a tragedy of the commons. The city maintains the traffic lights and is trying to compensate, it's a simple arms race.
Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections.
Maybe I missed something, but don't the sensors build into the road sort of serve the same purpose?
Ben
You could just take a picture of the jackass with the "don't run the red" cameras already mounted on the frickin lights. If it's an ambulance, you have a digital picture of an ambulance. If it's some jackass in an oversized SUV, take his ass to court. No law yet? Easy, if a guy is going to screw over and cut off dozens of people just to get home 5 seconds faster, how much you wanna bet he's breaking the speed limit, too?
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I've been wanting this feature for about 5 years now. About time, if you ask me. Anyways, if the script kiddies learn that you can remotely control traffic lights, chaos WILL ensue. Something tells me that, no matter how secure this stuff is, it will be cracked. Then, politicians will make infrared emitters illegal in the name of good faith... and true legal chaos ensues
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
On random intersections that can be controlled by these, rig up a camera to photograph the traffic in the direction that the triggering car is coming from whenever one is used. Nail anyone thus caught with a $1000 fine and maybe 3 months in jail.
The devices that are used around here don't turn the upcoming light green for the emergency vehicle. They turn the lights in all directions of the upcoming intersection red. This ensures that the emergency vehicle is the only one with the right to enter the intersection. Makes sense to me...
For a fact... in Los Angeles... the antiquated traffic control systems are not equipped to deal with these devices. I know... I used to install the traffic control systems and these things haven't been upgraded since 1972. And ever notice that every LA car chase has police running red lights behind the perp? Me too.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
Sure. And the best way to avoid nuclear war is to give every Joe his own a-bomb. Vernor Vinge would be proud.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
When I first thought of this, speed detectors were microwave and couldn't discriminate between one or more cars, but now with smart computing and cheap cameras, every set of lights could have speed/positional sensing, decide how many cars were at each direction, and set the green accordingly.
An unfortunate downside would be that any car whose image moved farther than the predetermined distance for the local speed would be automatically photographed and get a speeding fine as well as getting stuck at a red light - but then, speeding in built-up areas where the lights are is bad anyway.
But think of it - every set of lights would have inbuilt speed cameras, inbuilt redlight cameras, and be able to adjust traffic flow precisely for local conditions. Build in a link to a central database and you could preload lights with best strategies based on learned traffic behaviour...
So yeap - it's very Big Brother, but it would save petrol, save engine and brake wear on cars, save driver patience, and save lives too. Worth a thought.
-- ted russ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/mydynes/ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/myblogs/
I remember years ago that rapidly flashing your high beams would have the same effect. Of course it would draw the attention of others (like police!), but it was effective and handly late at night when no one else was around.
A colleague tested built one and tested it and said that he got a speed reading from a Doppler radar, although the real test would be to put it on a moving cart and spin it and see if you have a slower reading.
I did some analysis on the thing, and if I remember right, if you illuminated it with linear polarization it reflected back at you in circular polarization. A cop radar spoofer won't get any DOD funding, but I had thought of proposing to put it on the nose of a cruise missile as a Doppler radar spoofer (and a way to get some grant money), but I figured that the polarization change in the reflection would give it away so I decided no one would fund it.
Where I live if you expect people to respect a red light you are mistaken. I am a very cautious driver and here is a reason why: I am sitting next to this impatient dude with a car full of people blaring the radio loud and obviously impatient sitting next to me in the front row in a double left turn lane. The speed limit for the cross traffic is 35. The light turns green. I wait to look off the possible approaches while Mr. Impatient hit the gas rather than look around. Guess what? MI did not see the red light runner that clipped the front bumper off of his car because somebody thought they could make the yellow-red.
My spin is that if you look at the article you will notice that it changes the light immedietly.
Having witnessed such a light change in person I noted it also cuts the yellow down to half a second.
These devices are accidents waiting to happen.
In order for a CCD camera to detect *heat* infared, you'd have to heat the thing up to the point where the metal would be pretty damn close to glowing
This isn't (entirely) true, but I agree with the point you're making. At least with my Kodak digicam, I can see the coil on my range turn red much sooner by eye than with the camera.
The IR transmitter on my PDA and TV remote, however, are a bright strobe to the camera.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Why couldn't we just put GPS in the emergency vehicles that would track which street they were on and send signals to turn upcoming lights to the appropriate color?
I know that while it's not a "good" thing it'd be cool if someday all cars had them in them. Then some fancy system would know how many cars were arriving at a given intersectin and swap lights accordingly... it'd throw privacy out the window of course... but... it'll probably happen someday.
The way to do this is to have the traffic control device generate a random 128-bit number every second and transmit that broadly by IR. The vehicle device would take that 128-bit random number, combine it with a 128-bit secret code, generate an MD5 checksum of that 256-bit combination, and send the 128-bit sum back. The traffic control device would perform the same process with each of the (not too many) known valid keys, and compare the incoming vehicle signal against those precomputed sums. If any match, it is most likely a vehicle with a valid code.
This technique is relatively simple. It's big fault is a shared secret key. But since vehicles can have the key installed in a shop, that's not really a big issue. Multiple keys provide for a window to slowly change over vehicle to new keys every few months. Since no information is being transmitted, a man-in-the-middle attacks would be relatively fruitless (you might intercept the IR from one road and redirect it in from another to fool the system) because it would be doable only when an emergency vehicle is approaching.
Many cities are starting to put GPS tracking in emergency vehicles (as well as non-emergency vehicles like buses), and it won't be long until that is tied in to make lights change as vehicles are approaching with no local signalling needed (the light could be going to yellow to give a safe transition to red while the emergency vehicle is still coming around a corner from a cross street a block away).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/fourway.asp
If you're interested in the actual laws and ordinances governing emergency vehicle operation, do some googling for "code 3 driving" or similar.
I have seen these military convoys on the Interstate, and when most of us want to go 65 these guys are creeping along at 50. From the noise coming from the HMMV's, it sounds like these things are geared for off road use and that 50 MPH is about all those things can do on the highway. In the convoy there were all these poor dudes in HMMV's, and there were their officers riding in olive drap painted Suburbans (with 4WD hubs, but cruising comfortably in 2WD on the highway).
Yeah, the military-style Hummer looks like one mean vehicle, and the civilian one is so wide it has to have those truck cab roof lights on it, and the people who own one thing they are hot sh*t like that California governer dude. But if I had to ride in a military convoy, would I want to ride with kids in the noisy, bumpy school bus, or would I want to ride with the teachers in the smooth, car-like Suburban?
So then they come out with the H2, which is not really even a Hummer or anything like the HMMV -- the thing is a freakin' Suburban (or Tahoe or whatever) with some stupid looking grill on it to make you believe that Governer Arnold drives one of these things but he doesn't. But then a Suburban is a heck of a lot more comfortable than a Hummer, so why doesn't a person buy a Suburban rather than the Suburban which is styled to look like a HMMV, which is a vehicle on the same level as a school bus - something you don't want to ride in unless you are forced to by being one of the enlisted guys?
There's a sort of cutco / melaleuca style pyramid marketing thing going on with the MIRT as well. Strange.
If only I had someplace to be...
Read Pynchon.
With the way people run red lights here in Detroit, I'm surprised there is a market for this kind of product. I just saw a pack of five cars run a red cutting into left-turn traffic last night. Got the huge SUV? They'll stay out of your way. It used to blow my mind but I've gotten used to it.
Speak truth to power.
GPS is the way to go. With the location of the vehicle being continuously transmitted to a central control computer, the traffic lights can be directed to favor the approaching emergency vehicle even before that vehicle is in a straight line to it. There are also other advantages to a GPS system which can help keep multiple emergency vehicles using separate roads to avoid congestions or worse (it happens).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I like "aksed" and "larnyx."
The city I live in is moving away from the pavement-embedded sensors to a system that mounts a low-resolution camera above the light (facing the oncoming traffic). The camera is connected to a vehicle recognition system that can tell if traffic is approaching.
Supposedly, this system is cheaper (repairs don't have to tear up the pavement) and more effective for just the reasons you describe. Also, it solves the problems motorcycles have with being too light to trigger the pavement sensor. The govt. claims the cameras are too low resolution to be used as surveillance.
They didn't say how well the cameras perform in heavy rain, snow or fog, however.
The parts of the CCD elements where the image of headlights focuses in the cameras could be washed out with visible light and won't show the additional IR.
I haven't tried it, but why not?
Putting moderation advice in your
Makes me wonder about the logic coding for the light changers, too. If no engineer thought to wire in conflict resolution (2 IR signals coming from 2 different directions) what d'you think the system would do? Crash? =D Or, even worse, 4 way green?
I live in Los Angeles and we do not have this type of traffic system. A couple of my friends swear by the "flashing the high beams" trick which never works.
Where in the US do this light sensitive traffic signals exist?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I live in Australia, where we have a lot of vehicle activated lights, i.e. when you pull up at an intersection the lights will figure out you are there and change to let you through. In many places the lights will never change at all unless a vehicle is detected.
Does anyone know how this type of system works? There are no cameras, so I always assumed there was some sort of coil under the road with an active current so that it could detect a large metal object moving over it. There seems to be no problems with detecting motorcycles, either. I have noticed that the detection only occurs when you are right up close to the lights - if you're even a few metres back then the lights won't change.
Of course, this is a totally useless system. By the time you trigger the lights you have come to a complete stop and would actually be better off with timed lights as there would at least be some chance of getting a green light. I have often dreamt of creating some sort of EM pulse cannon to trigger the coil, but I lack the requisite engineering knowhow. Any ideas?
Read Pynchon.
While Googling for support on this point, I found this article, which mentions problems these induction coils (referred to as "wire loops" in the article) pose for motorcycles. So, like a pressure sensor, the induction sensor also need to be adjusted for smaller vehicles.
Completely off-topic to the main Slashdot article, but interesting nonetheless.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
For the record, most "smart" traffic lights do not use weight sensors.
Those rectangular cutouts in the road, which most people think are weight sensors, are buried wire coils which create a magnetic field. When a large metal object, such as a car, enters the field, it changes the inductance of the coil, which triggers the control mechanism.
well? It is not a radio transmitter, therefore not covered under the radar jammer laws. Light transmitters fall under the Food and Drug administration...
And you're running to a meeting instead of chatting with your coworkers.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I've been using this for years now. Take a normal strobe light, put a visable light filter on there, set it to 13Hz and tadaa. Green lights. You don't need the filter, but then people will wonder what on earth you are doing shooting a strobe light at the traffic signal.
If I remember correctly the emergency drivers receive exactly zero protection from personal liability, even if it isn't really their fault. And, if I remember correctly, they are not indemnified by anyone. That's reason enough for the guy driving the fire truck to not speed at all for any reason. BTW, It's been awhile since I took the class, so take this info with a grain of salt.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I work on a technology that will make this possible. It does include crypographic identity assurance. The technology is called Dedicated Short Range Communication and is closely related to 802.11a, but operatinging in the 5.9 GHz region (spectrum has been allocated by FCC). DSRC differs from 802.11a to handle high speed communication between radios. People are already thinking about many of the questions brought up about the technology in the article and the standard (administered by one of the engineering standards body) is in the process of being formed.
Near my house, we have two major thoroughfares that you enter via a left-turn green arrow. These lefts are followed by long (>2 mi) straightaways that lead directly to two major common destinations (retail areas with gym, shopping, etc.)
In both cases, I have to do +15mph exactly to make the next light in each case. If you do the speed limit, you WILL hit the next light. Otherwise you can "catch" the last green (which turned red at your injection light to let you make the initial left). On these stretches you can continue down a number of lights this way until you catch up to the reds (so you should slow down after a while).
Roundabouts are not to be confused with traffic circles which are usually retrofits of existing intersections. Traffic circles are meant to slow down traffic on lower-volume streets. The ones on the street where I live don't seem to slow the 'regulars', who not surprisingly who also run through stop signs.
to block cameras from reading your license plate number. As it's been mentioned, while you can easily be pointed out as the one using this via a camera mounted on the pole (cameras can see the IR) if you've ever pointed your camera at a TV remote, you know how bright this can be... Why not use this in conjunction with your license plate? If they can't see your license plate, they can't get you via the camera. Assuming your state requires front-mounted license plates, mount one on the front to block it from being read by camera and to change the light, as well as one on the rear. Hell, run them all the time, that way pesky red light cams and UK Toll cams can't get you either. I encourage everyone to try this out so I know if it works :)
Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
If the entire traffic grid was wired to a central location - say the same station where the almost standard CCD camera feeds go - then you simply plot each emergency vehicles route in advance. Then you have the next 2 lights become green in the emergency vehicle's direction, and keep triggering as you go. If the intersections are far enough apart you should do the standard yellow-to-red sequence for the cross traffic - as someone else here said, going straight to red causes accidents. You can also add a simple red siren to the top of each pole that lights up whenever that intersection is triggered.
This eliminates any remote devices that the public DOES NOT need, allows everyone to know what is going on, and gives the emergency vehicle full confidence in right of way, and the fastest possible path for each emergency call. Add a $5000 minimum fine to any idiot who runs an emergency red light, and people will pay attention to it.
3. Gargantuan infringement fine.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
The problem is that we have a lot of one-track minded code monkeys writing intersection control software, and a bunch of unimaginative buffoons in charge of the state traffic engineering offices. Believe me, I know from experience.
Why not give every transmitter a distinct serial number. Whenever the transmitters go off they automaticaly broadcast the serial number.
Have the recievers tied into the internet and accessing a central database.
Everytime they get a signal they clear it through the database before activating the light change.
Force all the transmitters to register with the database system and you should have an effective way of weeding out people not authorized to use them.
It would be a very simple thing to write up some code that tells the system that if a code is used at least twice within a certain time increment and at least a certain distance apart to block access to the code.
When the fire truck realizes that he suddenly has to stop for red lights then they call in and get there access code changed.
Well, let's see. Radar jammers, besides being slightly spurious in my mind, really don't hurt people all that much. Sine speeders are usually aware of how fast they're going on do it on a fairly regular basis (especially if they have one of these devices). Of course if the car is going fast enough the cop can probably tell, then pull you over and ticket you, and assign you the fine or whatever for possession of such a device, and if they were especially upset with you they could probalby search the car because after all if you're jamming Police Radar you must be a terrible person running drugs or children or something.
As for IR light changer things, all right, if you're using one of these and aren't an emergency vehcile, you're just an asshole, seriously. You're causing a disruption in traffic patterns (that have been managed and regulated to high heaven by civil engineers to make sure that things work in the most efficient fashion that they can be expected to), and endangering other people at that intersection, because lord knows that even if the emergency vehicles slow down at an intersection while using one of these things, some arrogant jerk who thinks that he's the most important person on earth isn't going to do that.
I mean really, traffic is regulated so that barring some unforseen circumstnace, most people can get from point a to point b as safely and as speedily as possible. Face it, you are riding in a two ton (or more) death machine, if you hit something it will get smasehd up, ifyou hit someone they will be very hurt. People for some reason think that traffic laws are meant to inconvinience them, that they couldn't possibly be for safety or some sort of fairness in regards to traffic, no it couldn't be that the people who drafted these laws had driven upon roads and had consulted with others, experts even, and decided that there were certain ways that traffic could be conducted that would give everyone a fair shake in regards to the road, otherwise some poor schmuck would be caught at an intersection waiting for teh line of one thousand cars to pass by so he could speed quickly across the road and pray that he wouldn't die.
in many places. Your state may vary. As long as no one takes a cut of the pool for any reason, they're normally legal. I must be all or nothing for everyone.
All they need is IR capable cameras and it'll be very obvious who changed the signal. It'd be like pointing a flashlight out your window. If it's a problem at an intersection that's causing traffic jams and accidents you can bet they'll be catching people.
That and I don't think there will be a shortage of people pointing fingers. Change a light with lots of people around and you just pissed off everyone in the opposite flow of traffic. Radar jammers are inconspicuous and don't affect anyone but the cops.
Work Safe Porn
So as long as you filter out the CCD-sensitive and visible light ranges, you can do it stealthily with a strobe light. But strobe lights are unwieldly. I understand most CCDs (even monochrome) start really cutting at out 900.
I would try with an IR diode at about 1000nm
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Take a look at the way that the Panopticon worked. It's a classic 18th Century prison design that ensured that every prisoner had a feeling of being watched, without actually knowing for certain whether they were or not.
The net effect is that you get the same effect of watching all the prisoners, without actually having to undergo all the tedium of actually watching.
In the UK, only a small percentage of speed cameras actually contain any film or emit radar. However, except for drivers with radar detectors, the effect of one on driver speed is the same as a fully operational camera. Only the police don't have to spend time/money collecting and developing film.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Slightly O/T, but doesn't this mean that this device could be slightly modified to actually blind one or more of the red light cameras?
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
sitting in the parking lot, turning the light red every time a car got near the intersection.
Green - nope red, green - opps red again, green - surprise red...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I actually like your idea ... usually it happens that a cell-phone yapping, laptop using, SUV-driving, etc idiot slams into an innocent in a "normal" car.
Instead of running over us poor people, maybe now the yuppies driving SUVs can each come from different directions and slam into each other.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
Ok let a Medic who has been using these devices for 15 years shed some light on this.
there are a few different types of devices on the market for controling traffic lights.
The idea behind them is to turn the light red in all directions but the one that the emergency vehicle is comming from. this way the vehicle can proccede unimpeaded through the intersection.
Most at first just required a frequency (light or radio)at first. Most if not all now require a 2nd carrier wave with a ID broadcasted. So the sensor recieves the signal, then recieves the ID carrier then changes the light. if the ID carrier is not present it doesn't work. This was done to prevent abuse by emergency vehicles while driving around not on a emergency.
So most people will buy these not read the fine print that a ID carrier must be installed for it to work in some areas then get pissed off at losing their money.
BTW the system i have used is the 3M Opticom (TM) system
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
What do you bet that the largest buyers of these things are self-involved egomaniac cell-phone yapping SUV driving assholes?
I also am wondering if it would be illegal if you were using a laser pointer to make the light turn green.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
It is a tragedy that people will happily do everything they can to get this technology, under the assumption that they can go faster, thereby sacrificing orderly traffic patterns and probably making the system unusable for many emergency vehicles for a while.
/. would be telling you how you can't prevent people from getting technology, and they should be allowed to do anything technically possible. In this case though, it's pretty obvious that people shouldn't have these devices. Traffic engineers try to keep the roads flowing smoothly and fairly. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't, but allowing the consumer to put the streets into total anarchy will not help.
In most cases
And remember, no matter how late you are or how important you are, the seconds you spend getting out of the way of the truck with the flashing lights are a lot more important for it than they are for you.
Emergency vehicles are still required to stop on a Red, then proceed. Stopping at each red light before proceeding shaves off seconds, and in the case of life-threatening injuring those few seconds could be crucial.
I'd say that it should be very, very illegal for normal people to have these devices, perhaps you could give certain traffic lights a camera that snaps the license of whomever flashed it the "green" signal, therefore determining whom is making unauthorized use of the system
"'"if everyone had these, 'they' would be forced to fix how the traffic lights are triggered" e.g. avoiding the problem entirely."
And YOU would be forced to pay for it.
It's cheaper not to engage in such stupidity in the first place, for EVERYONE.
I was in a surplus shop and picked up an interesting circuit board. It has over 90 LED's on it and a few other parts. It was attached to a lighter plug. I took it home and powered it up and didn't notice anything. I checked to see if it was an IR illuminator for a camera and found the light blinking. For IR, it's very bright. I thought feeding it's driver from a universal TV remote could be fun near the local tavern. It would be easy to replace the timer signal with a signal from a photo diode. That would make a super TV remote amplifier. I found the timer was easly defeated to make it a great IR illuminator. Now that I have read the article, it is easy to see by the shape of the board, it would easly fit properly in one of the 3rd stop light fixtures. I certanly don't want to get nailed using it to trigger lights, so I'll probably continue to use it for an IR illuminator. I'll have to hook up the scope again to check it's rate, but I think it's near 8 HZ at about 70% duty cycle.
It's a simple strobe with no fancy cadance or high frequency modulation.
I wish slashdot had a way to post pics. I would post a pic of the board.
The truth shall set you free!
"The problem is that we have a lot of one-track minded code monkeys writing intersection control software, and a bunch of unimaginative buffoons in charge of the state traffic engineering offices. Believe me, I know from experience."
Well since you know. You also know that most engineers (Yup! I'm one. Open loop, closed loop, Laplace, the whole nine yards) are trained in the classical method.You might want to read Bart Kosko's book, and the chapter on the history of fuzzy logic. Then maybe you will not be so harsh on those "code monkeys" and "unimaginative buffoons".
Well, what always pissed me off about these traffic sensors is that they don't pick up bicycles, and so you are stuck at a red-light until you decide to either break the law or walk your bike across the cross-walk. I get really tired of people forgetting that bicycles are motor vehicles too.
Logic, macros, and more
just like the said poster below, this is ridiculous. read this link
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
I suspect they all work this way, and any talk about a device that makes lights green is PURE NONSENSE.
Best Buy can have you arrested
In NYC almost all of the streets are one way only. Turning the lights red will just make impossible for emergency vehicles to move at all since they won't even be able to drive the wrong way down streets since traffic stuck at the red lights will be blocking them.
Many of the cities (such as Revere) in the Boston area already have very smart intersections. Drive up to almost any red light here, and the inductive loop detector will notice you're there, and the lights will promptly change (if, of course, there's no line of traffic approaching on a greater right-of-way street... these are truly smart). Some actually don't use inductive loops anymore, because the contacts wear down over time, and are hard to adjust if not installed properly. Instead, they've been using those optical scanners the infrared transmitter works with. However, these scanners don't just pick up infrared - they are smart enough to detect normal vehicles approaching, and adjust the lights accordingly. There's really no reason to cheat. Also... many cities around here don't even USE the infrared transmitters. At least in Revere, the lights are centrally controlled. When a fire truck, for example, is dispatched - its course is entered into the system and the lights change accordingly, clearing traffic IN ADVANCE of the vehicle even reaching the intersections. I noticed this just a few weeks ago, and was in awe at how advanced and dependent on technology we've actually become, and just how cool it is we can save those few lives that might have needed just one or two seconds faster response time.
Anybody know of any Open Source traffic control system? I hear a lot of people complaining about how poorly many of the lights in their city work. Maybe "we" can do better?
Would it be feasible to code such a system as an open source project? I guess I can't think of any reason why not. Just need enough volunteers with the appropriate knowledge.
Then of course you'd have to figure out how you'd get anyone to use it... I suppose the best way (probably the only way) would be to start a company that manufactures the control hardware. Though it likely would be very difficult to break into what is I assume well established market.
Ideas?
Or maybe this is just a stupid idea...
-future
.sig
Actually, there was a study done that shows that for most traffic conditions, even heavy traffic, randomizing the lights allows greater throughput. Syncronized lights only help if the traffic is very light, or if it is very, very heavy. However, the very heavy case is also prone to unpredictable behavior, as you might imagine, so it's not that great. So, everyone using these things to change lights will randomize them, and help overall throughput.
What I keep reading about is people talking about bans, revoked licenses, and prison time for what is in essence an IR flashlight.
WTF? This doesn't even pass the giggle test. some people out there want to make new laws to make it illegal to use an IR flashlight in your car!
If these devices were to recognize the color patterns of emergency vehicles would you people be talking about banning white colored cars with red or blue trim?
I don't get it, bans are good when it comes to things you don't like, but when someone tries to ban DeCSS or OSS you have a cow. How about being consistant here people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Hello?
Illegal in California. Misdemeanor+. Means you can go to jail. Most major PD's policy is to make an extra special effort to go after users of such devices.
Easy to detect and spot. And the State and some cities have cameras on highways and at intersections and on PD cars that just happen to be able to see them.
The people who say it doesn't work because the permanent magnet doesn't generate an "AC" field are clueless because a _moving_ permanent magnet would generate a changing field in the loop. Many dynamos work that way. And guess what - the bike moves.
They should give a more believable reason than that.
Another way is using induction technology that sends and receives data through "lines" in the road.
It probably isn't used in the States under the same name, but here is a link to it.
In Tucson, we have the system, but it doesn't appear to change the lights. All it does is activate strobes to let drivers know they need to perk up and get out of the way. Seems to affect surrounding streets too. I'm not sure precisely how the system works but it's not an all-green, all-the-time system. None the less, our ambulances and fire trucks (cops don't get them) get where they need to go.
Weaving only works in some kinds of traffic. It can be successful in moderately heavy traffic if the driver is skilled at timing the relative shifts of the lanes. But to maintain that skill, the driver has to experiment, and sometimes fail.
I don't drive very aggressively any more, both because I'm older and because such driving is not really accepted in California.
I don't get it. You seem to be saying that Fast Frank races ahead and skids to a stop at the red light. Slow Sam glides up behind him as the light turns green. How is Fast Frank "causing traffic"? Isn't traffic caused by the volume of vehicles on the road?
Here in the Netherlands we have this system everywhere. I cannot remember having encountered timed traffic lights in the past ten years. But what is even nicer is that we even have this system for bikes, which have their own traffic lights, which operate independently from the lights for cars. At some junctions bikes from all directions will get green lights together, and more often then the cars.
Why have lights you can override at all? Why don't the emergency services just jump the lights like they do in the UK?
If I come up to a red light, I'm stopping. If I hear an ambulance behind me, I expect it to jump the lights! The poeple on the green lane hear the ambulance and stop/slow down too.
Works fine over here. Is there something special about US traffic?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
It also could be one of the types of sensors which senses a strobing light, and the coherent light from the pointer registers as bright enough; combined with waving it back and forth and perhaps it's just enough to fool it into seeing a strobe?
Disclaimer: I am not a physics expert.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
That said, bicycles are vehicles and are allowed to use most roads, and it sucks when a stop light can't detect bikes and (having no timeout) denies them the right-of-way indefinitely.
Hmmm... I wonder if a programmable TV remote and recording an ambulance running through an intersection might provide you with the same tool?
Also, it solves the problems motorcycles have with being too light to trigger the pavement sensor.
You may have to explain this one... too light?
The system used here works the same as a metal detector. A wire loop is embedded in the pavement (and it's not that difficult of a process you cut, insert the loop, and tar-seal) and it simply detects metal near the loop (because it changes the resonant frequency of the inductor). I've got two friends that ride motorcycles and they say it has never been a problem for them.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
The contol system also knows about peak-times and vary the green light times accordingly.
See my journal, I write things there
"All Red" also gives the emergency vehicles the clearance to use the opposing lanes and any other clear space in the intersection etc, coupled with the fact that at any intersection, you ONLY want the emergency vehicles moving...no others.
Actually, you DO want other vehicles moving. Specifically, the ones in front of the emergency vehicle. There's not always room to pull over or give way within your lane, and giving the vehicles immediately in front of you a red light will... well... stop you too.
This isn't just a rumor, the system has two different priorities.
Low priority preemption, with strobe flashes at 10Hz, is intended for mass transit vehicles.
High priority preemption, with strobe flashes at 13Hz, is inteded for emergency vehicles.
So while on the surface, it may look like your almost-empty chugging-along Greyhound bus gives itself the same priority as a heart attack victim in a racing ambulance, in reality, the system was designed for this situation and gives the ambulance priority.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/pgs55thru57.htm# bike
as for riding on freeways...i used to live in Humboldt County in Norther CA, and the freeway was the only road between different towns, and so bicyclists used it regularly...but that, I think, is something of a unique situation.
Logic, macros, and more
Why not have a system where you pay as much as you like to whoever fixes/controls/maintains your local roads. You would have a box on your car that wirelessly beamed your ID number to traffic lights as you came up to them. If you were the only person at the intersection with a box, you would 'win'. If there were two people, then the one with the highest balance would win, if there were three, it would be the combined balances of the two going in one direction etc. And whatever money you donated would be reduced by 1/365 each day.
All the money gathered would be put back into road maintenance/improvement.
What if every vehicle was fitted with a traffic light beacon? If the transmitters were changed to send a unique code (like a MAC address or something), then the system could be adapted so that intersections are aware of the real-time traffic volume on each approach. They could then dynamically adjust the timing of the lights to maximise traffic flow through each junction. An extra dimension of usefulness could be added by allowing the intersections to return traffic flow data across a network. The data could be used to update a real-time map of a city showing traffic black spots; to drive roadside traffic information signs; or in longer term statistical analysis of the kind useful to town planners. Maybe junctions could talk to each other, which would be useful to expediate emergency vehicles through the network: "I've got a police car coming through my junction travelling south. It's probably headed your way. Change your North / South lights to green now."
This model assumes that every vehicle has a functioning beacon, which is unlikely because some will break and some will be deliberately broken (by those who fear Big Brother, perhaps). Also, someone with a modified beacon that transmits hundreds of different codes at the same time could spoof the system, or DoS it. It may also be a challenge to process the amount of data generated in real time, especially for IR receivers. Maybe radio tags similar to an RFID system would work better, except that the advantage of IR is that it can be made directional.
Of course this doesn't solve the emergency vehicle problem, but that's comprehensively discussed in other posts.
These systems are designed for emergency vehicle use and not for morons...this is a good example of a society gone nuts and off the deep end. Hacking dvd's/xboxes/sat/cable tv is one thing, but having a cavalier attitued about emergency equitpment is like hacking the navigation systems for airliners or train signalling systems etc.....somthing bin-laden would be proud of....he's probablly laughing right now....
This is the self preservation society.
...they are signalling you with their headlights: "get out of my way you moron!"
Actually my father taught me a technique using hte inductive system for when you're bike riding, he has rode cross country several times and knows some neat tricks..
;-)
If you lay your bike down flat on the pavement over a sensor across the width of two bars, you will trip the coils. they are detecting metal in the bike after all.
I couldn't believe it till I tried it and yup, he's right
Think of a RSA SecurID token. A 6 number sequence that both the token and the authenticator know that changes at preset intervals.
Emergency vehicles where I live already control the traffic lights using rapidly strobing lights.
...
The traffic lights go red for every lane EXCEPT the one from which the emergency vehicle is approaching, which will be green, helping to clear a path
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
These things are pretty obvious when you use them. Most intersections which detect the infrared flash have a strobe above the traffic lights. When the emergency vehicle sensor is triggered, the strobe will start flashing. Watch the traffic lights the next time you see an emergency vehicle trigger the sensor. You'll see what I mean.
Man gets into a taxi and the taxi driver takes off at speed. At the next intersection, the lights are red but the taxi driver runs straight through them.
The man in the back complains..."No worries", said the driver "...my brother always runs the reds too."
Same thing happens at the next junction. Passenger in the back shouts out as they roar through the junction. "No problem..my brother's always doing it and he's never been stopped or had an accident."
At the next intersection, the lights are GREEN and the taxi driver jams on the breaks and they screech to a halt. "Why the heck did you do that, the light was green!?" says the passenger.
"Sure, my brother might be crossing the other way" comes the reply.
Hey ho, back to work!
AT&ROFLMAO
Too late, I just submitted a pantent on that technology. You may continue your research upon purchasing a license.
If 100 LED's drew an average (not pulse current) of 100 ma each, the thing would draw only 10 amps. It would draw 120 watts of power. Somehow I see the device melting down before it would blow the cig lighter fuse. Not many IR LED's can average 200 mA and survive. Peak currents in that range or more are common.
Having a 90+ led IR illuminator that draws under 2 amps, I doubt the technical information is correct. My 1KW inverter is only fused at 100 amps. How much power was he drawing again?
The truth shall set you free!
I have never seen an ambulance with this device installed
I worked as an EMT in Virginia. We have little boxes with narrow tubes on their faces, pointed at oncoming traffic. These are <em>sound</em>-activated, and we had to use a specific siren setting when approaching an intersection with one of these devices. The tube on the traffic signal box was basically a waveguide, to reduce sound from other directions.
Except that DRM is a very different problem domain.
Securing access to a traffic control system is a simple matter of authentication/authorization. It is a well understood problem.
Managing secure access even across insecure channels is practical, not perfect but practical. Without it the internet would be a very diffferent scene than it is today.
I've always thought that trafic lights should also have a blue flashing light on them, which comes on when an emergency veichle approaches. The emergency veichle can go through but no-one else.
.. will no doubt carry an article about traffic light control jammers being sold to stop people who use the controls causing chaos.
Don't forget to copy the file into notepad or similar and look at it using the Terminal font if you are a Windows user (and don't mind the rant at the end. :)
It's a bit of a simplistic circuit, I thought a IR detector acting as a timed trigger would be a nice mod...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Originally intended only for emergency vehicles, the $300 MIRT (mobile infrared transmitter) emits an infrared beam that signals traffic signals to turn green and gives the vehicle the right-of-way. It is only a matter of time before self-centered drivers start using the devices widely to skirt traffic congestion, which is creating fears that chaos will ensue.
Computer Support Version:
"Let's give everyone Admin Rights!"
Who's designing this.... Microsoft?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
is that you can sometimes make lights with this device change by flashing your high beams. I used to do this all the time with a light that was supposed to change with a weight sensor in the road that didn't work. The light also happened to be right next to the fire company so it had one of the sensors (not all lights in the area had them.) So, I would flash my high beams really quick on and off a couple times when I was about 50 yards from the light and it would change in time for me to go through.
My point being, that if I can do it like that I'm sure that any system that would write tickets for this would have false positives, from just random effects such as sunlight bouncing off of chrome, or a car hitting up bump which throws the headlights up. False positives are one thing that courts have frowned upon in the past, especially in systems that try to write tickets without having a human operator present.
When I was kid, growing up 20 miles south of Buffalo, a deputy got shot.
Every cop between my little town and the hospital on Buffalo was out blocking intersection so the ambulance could make record time.
To no avail, a 12 gauge in the gut doesn't leave much.
Being in the industry that deals with this kind of thing, this is old news.
There's various was of dealing with this. Already mentioned here is the fact that the devices can be set up to change all of the lights to red, thus eliminating the problem.
At leat in my state, the emer vehicles do not have to stop on the red signal ( but they do slow down a bit ). But you still have to deal with the places that allow "right on red" and in some cases with one way steets, "left on red".
The signals can also be set up to change upon detection of the white light strobe on the emer vehicle, or upon hearing the siren "yelp". Neather of these works really well on a private vehicle....
Oh, and it's a simple circuit to build these. An infrared emmitter in the proper range and power, and an oscillator circuit to flash the IR at about 18 HZ.
Robert
This isn't new at all. In the southern NH and northern MA area, all emergency vehicles have whats called either "Opticon" or "Opticom" or something like that. All it is: a strobe light that blinks at a certain rate. In larger cities, it blinks in a certain pattern. What people could do is get a fire truck on video and slow down the playback to get the pattern. I believe that there was even an article circulating a few years back, passing this off as a type of "box" used by phone phreaks and other technological hobbyists.
*duck*
In Soviet Russia, the paranoid KGB used to arrest innocent people.
- Now if there were 2 prisoners who didn't confess, they would both get a sentence of 3 years.
- If one made a false confession about the other, he would get just 1 year, and the other one 25 years.
- If they betrayed each other, they would both get a sentence of 10 years.
The best thing to do for 1 person is to betray the other prisoner. (he might do the same (10 years in jail instead of 25), or not(just 1 year)).
If you think as a group, the best for everyone is to hold out (don't fuck with the trafficlights). Human beings don't work this way, so people will use this technology ("the neighbour does it, and if I don't, I will be the one waiting")
I for one, welcome the chaos!
I am a traffic engineer. In-road loop sensors are the coil of an oscillator circuit. Inductance changes caused by vehicles show up as a frequency change at the detector amplifier in the control cabinet. However, this inductance change is not an increase caused by the vehicle acting like a a big iron core. Instead, it is a decrease. Eddy currents are generated in the sheet metal of the vehicle, lowering the energy stored in the loop, and therefore its inductance. A motorcycle has a lot less sheet metal than a car. To be reliably detected on a motorcycle, you need to use strategies that put more sheet metal in the strongest part of the field. In other words, ride on top of the wires. If you can see where the loop in cut, ride over it. Make sure to hit the corners. If you can't see it because it is paved over, ride about three feet from the lane line to your right. That is about where one of the wires is. If this doesn't work for you, coil a few turns of wire together, short the ends together, and attach it under your bike. Theoretically sound voodoo. The magnet mentioned above will not help.
Are you really saying that an ambulance should just smash into any cars not heeding the siren? Yeah, that would probably work great. Then they can send another ambulance for the first one. You have to take into consideration the fact that some drivers may not hear the siren and, while that may be their fault, it's still better for the emergency folks to be safe and ensure that they actually arrive where they need to be.
Here's the law in Ohio, probably similar everywhere:
bad sig...no donut.
I've actually had to do that; sometimes on a motorcycle there's not enough steel to trigger the loop sensors. Near where I used to work there was a main road and the light from the side road my job was on only changed when it sensed a vehicle, and I'd regularly sit there until either a car came up behind me or I got off and pushed the walk button. I've actually read that that is illegal, drivers aren't supposed to activate a pedestrian device, but whatever.
If they make a four-way red light changer, I'm getting one.
I don't own a car, and as a pedestrian, I get pissed off waiting forever for the 'walk' sign to come on.
It's time for pedestrians to reclaim their right of way.
Rob already thought of this, years ago:
http://cmdrtaco.net/rants/lights.shtml
-- The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
The gubmint puts in traffic lights, because we can't be trusted to drive courteously and responsibly.
The gubmit puts in back doors to the system, because surely nobody would be discourteous or irresponsible enough to abuse them.
To nobody's great surprise, it turns out that they were right the first time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
yo, what happens if you lose? Do you not get a blowjob, or does she have different equipment then the 'convention' gf?
Strangely enough, the USPS (Yes, the mail) is up there with the police, fire and EMS in being able to go thru traffic lights.
Another interesting point of fact, (at least in New York state) the flashing red lights give NO legal rights to disobey the speed limit.
So how long before NYState is sued into the stone age by the survivors of a family who was left to burn while the cop wrote the fire truck a ticket for speeding? God...yet another reason I'm glad I'm not a legal resident of this state.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
..if you've waited a "reasonable time" for the light to change, and then proceed VERY CAUTIOUSLY through the intersection. I can't cite chapter and verse, but American Motorcyclist had a column about it several months ago. YMMV, check your state laws first.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Well, not too light, exactly, just made of the wrong materials. Some states (Tennessee) now even allow motorcycles to run red lights if the sensor doesn't trigger. See this article.
We have traffic signal control devices at major intersections in our first due area that are controlled by the siren on emergency vehicles. It's got directional sensors that are smart enough to tell which direction you're approaching from to clear traffic in the proper direction. Don't know any technical details, sorry.
jeff
sdg
What this means is that the Ambulance (or any other vehicle running authorized L&S) in its operation basically "can't hurt anyone or break anything" but they can disregard traffic laws otherwise.
When the L&S are off, the IR emitter (usually they are tied together) should be off as well as traffic laws apply.
They dont have to stop for red lights, but they do have to exercise caution, I've had intersections blocked by a police car for me that I didn't pause (much) for, these IR devices creating 4 way reds has a similar effect, but you still need to exercise caution for the guy who runs the red, is drunk, etc.
Pete
So then they come out with the H2, which is not really even a Hummer or anything like the HMMV
You mean like a Jeep Wrangler is not really an Army 'GP'?
Jeep has been selling vehicles with those 'GP' characteristic vertical slat front-ends since the end of WWII. The majority of Jeep vehicles constructed in that time have had this defining feature, even station wagons and the like.
Jeep dumbed down the 'GP' design to sell cars. They are still ripping off the 'GP' today, but nobody cares anymore. The same will happen for the Hummer.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
The power of a good old fashioned pentium and the hardware to support it can be had in many modern consumer devices that cost less than $100, such as palm pilots, graphing calculators, etc. Likewise, encryption chips are available which automate the process and would allow for a much smaller central processor.
However, the article does state that the total cost of the system is $15,000 - $20,000 per intersection. Going the rediculous overkill route and adding in a fanless 800mhz C3 in a Mini-ITX motherboard with a 1GB CF card, a strong IR sender / reciever, and an auto-timesynch radio card would still only bump the price up about 5%, even if they paid full retail. Attaching a Zire would be significantly less than that, and would only require an IR amplifier and a modified power supply.
Of course, what is needed is a challenge - response system that looks something like this
1. Light continually broadcasts date-based challenge
2. Ambulence recieves challenge
3. Ambulence broadcasts response
4. Light turns green
But the hardware to do that in a reasonable length of time isn't a space-agey as you seem to think.
The ______ Agenda
I just look for the loop and make sure I'm inside of it. Even carbon-fiber or aluminium bikes typically have enough ferrous materials to trigger the system (e.g., cranks, bottom bracket)
Your monitor is staring at you.
I would be very happy to have a device in my car that would tell me (and all those red light running morons) a traffic signal's current status and how much longer until the light changes status. While it wouldn't eliminate the more aggregious violators, it would give the law abiding drivers the needed information to plan their approach.
I've seen several cases where drivers, in heavy traffic congestion, were paying too much attention to the light above them to notice the stopped car in front of them.
I've also noticed lot of insane acceleration on the highways cutting through town when drivers see the green light a mile or so down the road. Many of them go from about 60 (the limit) to about 95 because (due to the road curvature before the light comes into view) they don't know how long the light has been green, and they smash the gas pedal in hopes that they can make it.
Knowing the light's status and timing with certainty from an adequate distance would at least allow more informed insanity (where slowing down or keeping a legal speed would be more likely to place you at the next green light safely -- for yourself and the other drivers).
How about an auction system that offers the green light to the highest collection of bidders. The bid is paid through a micropayments system (tied to a car-mounted RFID) which divides the money among the people who were kept waiting (maybe the traffic department gets a nice cut of the bid money, too). If you value your time (and you are rich) then you bid high. If you don't mind waiting, bid low and rake in the dough.
I could even imagine poor people joy riding (joy stopping???) for dollars in wealthy suburbs at rush hour.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hugely Pedantic Technical Niggle - We use loops for vehicle detection and they are mostly not a single conductor. We drop one loop of a 4 conductor unshielded control cable in the ground. Then cross connect the wires red to black, black to green, green to white and hook up the remaining red and green to the detector terminals. One cable gives you four turns of loop which = 4 times the sensitivity.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
"Maybe if everyone had these, it would lead to smarter intersections."
Wouldn't it basically have the same effect as the pressure plates already used to determine traffic patterns?
I just got back from London and couldn't imagine driving there; the underground/bus system was much more efficient than my driving 1 hour to travel 12 miles at 7 AM.
It would be nice if there were more demand for mass transit in my area, but they just keep widening lanes instead of coming up with better transit systems. I realize, now, how entiwned we USAians are with our vehicles.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
...but they're arguably the original vendors of the system. I remember hearing about them over 15 years ago.
Washington is apparently not one of those states. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/ texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=ontheroad26e&dat e=20030926
I think in this case it is the case of a badly configured light. My idea in catching "false positives" with the camera angle would be to take note of people that occur multiple times or freqeuently enough to indicate they are zapping the signal - this should halt incidental changes.
As per the light themselves, I think they do have technical issues at times, as I have heard of an accident where one flipped straight from Red to Green (the claimant was found at-fault as the insurance company didn't believe this, but I did see the light do this once in a seperate incident). I would recommend fixing the system first, but also issuing warnings about abuse once it is secured properly.
Firstly, the headlights would appear to be bright, but flashing even brighter at 10 or 14Hz.
Secondly, the headlights are pointed down, so the headlights would not (and could not) completely wash out the ccd unless they were pointed at the CCD, in which case the person gets a citation because their lights are not operating correctly.
-Adam
Drill baby drill - on Mars
>You may have to explain this one... too light?
Yes, in a roundabout way. Not enough metal means not enough induction. Therefore, no green light.
My buddy used to ride around his Army base in Texas. Despite having 1200cc's, he wouldn't set off the detectors at intersections, since they were recalibrated to also detect tanks as well as cars.
Rene Carlos
3 kids in the back
More likely just the one. The really bad offenders have no excuse to use a gas-guzzler at all, whereas 3-kid families do actually get my sympathy when it comes to using a full-size vehicle.
It would also be good for bicycles, I assume, although you can buy nice magnetic thingies (IANA physicist) to stick on the [motor]bike to trip the sensor. I ride a bike to work a lot, and before I got one I avoided a lot of intersections where I needed to make a left and had to wait for a car.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
The odds are stacked, the game rigged.
As the article says, these things are currently perfectly legal. They are reviewing whether or not they can pass a suitable law about them. Just kidding. I hope.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
In addition headlights on moving vehicles do not have constant apparent brightness to a fixed observer due to the road not being very smooth. Maybe you live in Wisconsin, where the roads are smooth and the taxpayers know why, but here in Illinois, a smooth road is one without too many craters. Choose a fixed observation point alongside a road and measure the observed brightness of the vehicle headlights and you'll find it fluctuating all over the place.
Furthermore, headlights that conform to US DOT requirements shine light upwards to illuminate overhead signs on the Interstate highways. European headlights have a much sharper cutoff line, above which very little light shines, which is why they're not DOT approved for use on the street anywhere in the USA.
It's unlikely that these camera systems will be used to issue headlight adjustment tickets, don't you think? Even if they were, which ticket would you prefer? I'd choose the one that requires you to show that you've had your headlights re-aligned ($10 at the local service establishment), rather than the one with a $4000 fine and possible jail time.
It's a moot point anyway, out here in the country they have these systems in place but they don't seem to influence the traffic signals at all - from what I've seen and heard, the white light on top of the traffic signal is just used to give the Public Safety Professionals advance warning that the light they're approaching is about to change or is in the middle of its cycle.
Putting moderation advice in your
This thing looks like a scam. OptiCom and other such devices won't respond to such a weak signal and usually require strobe lights. I work in the traffic industry and I know of what I speak.
TT
Asking an obvious question is insight? Okay. What idiot civil engineers buy these?
Well if every car - including EMS vehicles - had a GPS - then each city can really intelligently control traffic. Singapore is partly there with its ERP system. See_ motor ing_erp.htm
http://www.lta.gov.sg/motoring_matters/index
Obvious privacy issue would be raised by others...
Good article. Really sums up the mentality when I read the following:
"Motorcyclists had complained they were forced to wait excessive periods of time at stop lights because sensors that control the lights did not recognize motorcycles, which are now made mostly of aluminum and fiberglass, not metal."
Last time I checked, Al was listed as a metal on the periodic table, although only a paramagnetic one...
And of course: KNOXVILLE
Right.
Personally, I agree with Mr. ""I can't believe this was even considered."
Sheesh.
By the way, I've owned a motorcycle. I've ridden it. I'm wholly against this.
who knew it would take this invention to slashdot a traffic light?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
....from the Steve Wozniak to the principals office dept.?
it was Woz who was the prankster.
and they approach a light from dfferent directions?
who goes first, second, do they just collide?
Though, as you know, the filter is there because the lenses are not designed to focus IR to the same point as visible light. It's hard enough to get a lens to focus red through blue light close to the same points; even there it fails and that's called "chromatic aberration".
If the IR was not blocked, you'd get a very fuzzy picture due to the IR image being focussed to a slightly different place than the visible light image.
The "X-Ray" effect is real but very weak. Many fabric dyes and printing inks are practically transparent in the IR. Because of this, printed patterns, particularly on synthetic materials, may not show up if you've viewing in pure IR light.
In order to see the effect, you not only need to remove the IR block filter, you need to install an IR pass filter, which blocks VISIBLE light and lets through only IR. They're freaky filters, I have one. They appear completely black but the camcorder can see through them. They're pretty expensive filters, because they're only really used in industry or by pro photographers; a smallish filter that a camcorder might use will run $50 or more.
You also need to have a VERY strong IR source; basically, you must be shooting outside in direct sunlight.
With all this in place, you can kinda, sorta, see through clothes, a little. It looks maybe almost as good as a wet t-shirt contest, at absolute best, but not really quite that good. Also everything is monochrome, and the Sonys that people were using for some reason tint the scene green; I guess they thought that green looked like night vision equipment and people would think that was cool. Really, it's just kinda stupid; I would have rather had B&W.
All in all, it's a hell of a lot of money and effort for practically no result.
I think its funnier than shit....always liked technology breakthoughs !
Duh you idiot. It's a device for emergency vehicle use. therefore illegal where stated.
Go ahead, but blue and red blinking lights on your roof and argue your "light" point to the officer...
idiot.
Does this guy work for the RIAA or the MPAA? This sounds an awful lot like what they say about copy protection. And it doesn't do a god damned thing for piracy -- except validate some people's reasons for doing it.
Error 666 - SCO source has been found in your Linux kernel. Please remove it.
Formerly kdsolutions
on the coders. I apologize. I've just had serious issues with traffic control in the past, and have encountered significant resistance. However, this does not come from the coders themselves. I do not apologize to the unimaginative buffoons though. If you've ever dealt with the people in charge of state offices, then you probably know what I'm talking about.
I understand the appeal of classical controls. I mean, everything is exact, and there is no uncertainty. You have all of your models and you can design a controller that has a rise time of x, settling time of y, overshoot of z, etc. It's very precise, and appeals to the extremely logical, mathematical nature of most engineers.
However, how accurate is that model? The model is linear, but is it a linear system? No, you have to linearize it. That linearization is only good over a certain range, and after that it fails. A linear model says I can pump 100 A through a 1 ohm resistor, but I know better.
There's also the issue of noise, but the main problem with traffic control is the model. People are highly nonlinear, and their behavior is not easily modeled. Deriving a transfer function for the driving habits of city full of people is an impossible task. The best you can do is come up with probabilities and go from there. Now, I don't know about you, but I find the math involved ugly and cumbersome.
So why not derive a set of fuzzy rules? A simple case is classifying traffic as light, medium, or heavy, which would correspond to short, medium, and long green phases. The math of membership functions is extremely straightforward. Of course, this is an extremely simple example, but intersection control is still fairly intuitive. Anyone sitting at a red light at 3 am can see that nobody's coming, so there's no reason they shouldn't have a green light. With fuzzy logic, you use the same kind of reasoning, and come up with a much more efficient traffic controller. There are some instances where an imprecise approach can lead to much better result, and this is one of them.
my moped fails to change the light at 3am when there is no one else around.
If you can prioritize, then you can put these on all cars. At night, when there is next to no traffic, the light can choose to be green for the direction with a waiting car. It would be more reliable than those weight detecting ones. I hate trying to get my tires directly over it. If there were an ambulance/fire/police vehicle then it's frequency would have a higher priority than the normal car frequency. You might be able to use the same IR device to charge tolls on the turnpike.
Eat at Joe's.