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Traffic Light Switcher Makes Critics See Red
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Yahoo/Washington Post article: 'It sounds like a suffering commuter's dream come true: a dashboard device that changes red traffic lights to green at the touch of a button.
Police, fire and rescue vehicles have had access to such equipment for years, but now the devices are becoming available to ordinary motorists
thanks to advances in technology and a little help from the Internet. Safety advocates are outraged, and news accounts in Michigan last week
led to politicians there seeking a ban on the gadgets'." Update: 11/06 02:25 GMT by S : A previous Slashdot story mentions the device, though not the Michigan legislature's subsequent ire.
"Can you imagine the nightmare our roads would be if everybody had one?"
Couldn't the opposite be true? Maybe the light would stay green longer for whichever side had more traffic? Ideally it could create "democratic" intersections and reduce the amount of time you spend stopped with no traffic going the other way. I'm sure it wouldn't actually work, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?
Have every vehicle installed with a device that interacts with a Traffic control light so that it would act like a load balancer. If no one else is by the light then a vehicle would get through without having to stop. Otherwise the light would see how many requests it is getting and let the appropriate group go.
i was told by a traffic engineering friend of mine that there are detectors out there that look for the strobe lights that apart of a emergency vehicle's blinkinlights, and change the light colors accordingly. I would assume that normal headlights are distinguishable from emergency lights (otherwise the detectors would be useless).
Are these the same detectors discussed in the article?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I lack hard data, this is all real old (like childhood pre-driving) memory, but my understanding is that this was origionally done way back when (like 60s maybe?)using optical sensors and the pointable floodlight on cop cars. It was abused then and the solution was to switch to to some sort of radio thing and take out the green option, simply turnning the light 4 way red. This did not impede an ememrgency vehicle who was the only thing supposed to use it anyway. So I'm thinkng hoax/urban legend real hard. If its true though, screwing with traffic lights in a busy intersection is gonna kill somoeone right fast. Manslaughter/depraved indiference perhaps? This is unfunny.
Before I ever read it on slashdot, my friends and I were hacking traffic lights thanks to phrack. It used to take me 25 minutes to get to work, but now it only takes 15 :P
It also tells you how to get into the main traffic light control system, though you have to go through a bunch of backdoors into a VAX system. Imagine if Al-Qaeda managed to do that, though...
http://www.phrack.org/phrack/60/p60-0x0e.txt
As the article states, most cities and counties use the Opticon system by 3M. This system has two components, an encoded flash reciever, and a radio reciever. In order to pre-empt the light, you had to have a valid encoded flasher, and the encoded radio signal. There is no nation-wide standard for the pre-emting devices, so each locality sets up its own code. Good luck trying to us one of these black boxes to trip signals, it won't work 99.99% of the time.
I worked on the traffic signal system in a central california town, and we had 3 different codes: 1 for fire/police, 1 for ambulances, and one for maintenance work. Each time a signal was pre-empted, it was logged at the signal control center downtown. I worked with a guy who had a maintenance encoded flasher on his truck. It was kinda fun cruising through town, never hitting a green, but we didn't do it very often.
I think the black boxes they are selling are just for people dumb enough to think they work.
It's tough, but if everyone cleaned up their driving habits, everyone would be home 5 or 10 minutes earlier rather than just the poor drivers getting home 2 to 3 minutes earlier.
\begin{game theoretic rambling}
This is a classic example of prisoner's dilemma, where individual welfare is pitted against the common good. Either way, a driver is better off if he acts greedily: If most drivers cooperate with each other, then the greedy driver takes advantage and gets home before the cooperating drivers. If almost nobody cooperates, then one must be a greedy driver, or be taken advantage of.
The big question here is what should a driver do to make commuting the least painful, and there's no simple answer. There are many possible strategies:
1. Always be greedy -- that way you're never the sucker.
2. Never be greedy (Golden Rule) -- that way you're looking out for the common good, and if most other people do the same, then the relatively few greedy jerks out there won't cause too much trouble.
3. Only be greedy in retaliation to another's greed (tit for tat) -- can work well, but can lead to feuds of reciprocal retaliation between two parties.
What will work best? Who knows? Many studies have been done on this with two-player games, with tit-for-tat being the clear winner. Traffic, of course is a multiplayer game, so who knows? My guess is that it would depend on the current traffic conditions -- if you're driving with a bunch of jerks, you have to be a bit greedy, otherwise, go with strategy (2).
\end{game theoretic rambling}
The amusing thing is, in England, merely flashing your headlights does this. My driving instructor told me and I tested it on many occasions, and it works like a charm.
It goes like this:
1) Fire department installs special racks atop their fire engines. Fire department allows qualified paintball players who pay a fee (say, $100/mo. for unlimited rides) to ride along in these racks.
2) As the engines go zooming through the city, a bottleneck appears. It seems some assmunch of a driver is refusing to get out of the way for fear of losing his precious spot in the mad dash to get to the freeway.
3) Traffic Decency Guardians (aka TDGs) unleash a hail of accurate paintball fire at the offending motorist. The paintballs are colored bright purple, or perhaps a mixture of purple and orange. They are not water-soluble. They do mark said motorist as a complete assmunch, so other motorists are sure to treat the offender accordingly.
4) Violations of right-of-way rules plummet. Paintballers everywhere compete for selection as TDGs. The fire department finally has enough money to get that extra ladder they've always needed. Everyone wins.
Except the guy with purple paint all over his car. ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Fire trucks in my area change the lights so that ALL 4 directions get RED. Then because they are an emergency vehicle, they can cross into the ongoing lane and pass all the normal traffic in the intersection. This wouldn't help normal people unless they had blinking lights and sirens on their cars.
I am presently working on a traffic tracking project that, in addition to other things, is for the purpose of tuning a city's traffic lights for efficiency.
At many of these intersections are video camera. They can record for a variety of purposes including accidents and even ticketing. But have you ever recorded yourself with a video camera and used an infrared remote? Did you know the light from the remote is very well displayed to the camera? IT IS!! Looks like a blinking strobe! CCDs pick up light differently than the human eye, so even though we can't see it as people, the watching video cameras can potentially see you!
The device may not be illegal, but using it might be! I'd recommend against it strongly.