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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.
What idiots make these things???
Oh well, what the hell...
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 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.
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.
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
You drive on the left side of the road, around them.
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.
Which is whyyou are supposed to move your stupid ass out of the way by moving across the interscetion when an ambulance, firetruck or police car is behind you with siren and lights if you are stopped at a red light. But most people just sit there like a deer in the headlights. A 4 way red would work if people knew what to do and did it. I think if you are found with one of these remotes they just shoot you right there. The lights and siren are there for a reason they are not going to get coffee. Some persons life is at stake. If you think you are so dammed important that you matter more you are not fit to breath.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
The lights in the direction of the emergency vehicle turn green so people can move out and away instead of blocking the intersection. I've seen people at regular 'dumb' intersections sit in front of a fire truck and block it because he thought he would get in trouble for running a red to let them through. Also, I'm not sure if it's lke this everywhere, but around here if something comes through such an intersection the light goes from green to red with no yellow warning at the exact same time the other direction gets the green. That sould defiately cause some chaos if ignorant drivers decide to get selfish.
One thing people always forget is that speeding and runing reds rarely gets you there faster. People who dodge and weave through rush hour highway traffic are a whole 2 or 3 cars in front of me when I get to the off ramp. I've learned the timing of lights around my office and home so now I can actually get there faster by driving just few miles under the limit. Usually it's the impatient people that create traffic in the first place. The more that people obey speed limits the better the timing of intersections gets.
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.
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
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!
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.
Here is a photo of the sensor
It had to happen sooner or later. If they don't already the next versions will just employ strong encryption to foil the morons buying these.
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.
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
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.
I welcome every complete moron that buy's these to use them... just like the police radar jammers.
As with any device that is in a legal grey area, judicious use is the key. Think of these things like stinkbombs in high school. If you are the ONLY one in the room where you use it, it will be more than obvious who is responsible. If you do use it in an auditorium with 500 other students around you, it is much harder to find out who is the culprit.
If you are in a fair sized group of cars, you are pretty safe when using a radar jammer or device to change the traffic signal. Sure it may be illegal, but when the effort required to catch you makes in impractical to do so, the police don't even make the effort. How often does the office football pool get busted?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
PROBLEM; Light goes green.
Design the device to make the lights go RED in all directions. Emergency vehicles can safely drive around the waiting traffic on the 'wrong' side of the road, because there's no oncoming traffic. There's no 'subtle' way for a non-emergency vehicle to use this type of device.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
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/
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
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
Good point. Sometimes there's a tradeoff between aesthetics and practicality. The HMMV is incredibly cool, and incredibly impractical for anything non-military. The H2 is incredibly pathetic - nothing worse than a phony version of a something cool.
The fact that this was modded down points to a problem with slashdot. I think the offtopic mod should be reserved for material that seriously disrupts the conversation. And likewise, 'troll' should be used for page-widening posts and the like, not for subtle sarcasm. It bothers me that someone took a few minutes to post something coherent and interesting and got modded down so it sinks below tons of 5-second posts saying "lol linux rules omg" or something.
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?"
"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.
I believe the technical rules are that if an emergency vehicle driver causes an accident due to driving recklessly - even if on the way to an emergency - they can be prosecuted.
Obviously the court will probably be lenient, since they were doing it for a good reason, but the drivers still need to be aware of the dangers they can pose by not at least slowing down a bit before hitting a red in case somebody is still driving across the intersection.
So your suggestion is those with less money have less right to the roads. Those that choose to make less money (ethical careers, nurses, teachers and coders that choose not to work for MS/SCO) should have to wait twice as long to get where they are going.
I suggest a system where those who are creating the least congestion get a box that gives them right of way. Pedestrians and cycles first, then motorcycles, then cars in order of size.
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.