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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.
why these were legal for non-emergency sale in the first place?
They are on sale here
Funny thing, it'll only actually work for the first 100 people. After that, traffic will be substantially slower due to the lights being out of sync that it'll be slower for everyone.
Kinda like sitting in the middle of an intersection on a red. Sure, you were 20 feet ahead of those behind you but the only reason you're stuck in the intersection is the guy 3 blocks up blocking your route.
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.
Rod Taylor
MIRT, 3M Opticom(R), and Tomar Strobecom(R) traffic signal preemption are optically-based communications systems and the main brands of these systems.
Clearly this is illegal (or soon will be) and stupid waste of the public's time and money to refit this lights to stop this silly company. FAC of America located out of Minn. runs websites such as TheMIRT and Guns'N Stuff The are allowing people to be resellers for $300/unit.
There is a flash "demo" of the MIRT in action here
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.
These devices could be contrasted with radar/laser detectors.
I think the radar/laser detectors are fine, but the devices which allow people to actually change the system should not be allowed.
Radar/Laser detectors serve a good purpose. Yes, they allow people to "undermine" the law by getting around traffic tickets (if you're alert,) but they also slow down traffic when an officer is nearby. The people with the radar detectors slow down when an officer is running radar nearby, and therefore drive safer because they don't want a ticket.
However, devices like the ones coming now actually affect the system rather than circumvent it. My having a radar detector does not affecy anyone but me. But one that allows me to change traffic lights in my favor affects the other people on the road!
This is all IMHO.
This kind of security thinking is akin to hiding your head in the sand. FIX THE PROBLEM! Don't legislate bans on exploits. DESIGN SUCH THINGS SECURELY IN THE FIRST PLACE! It wouldn't be that hard to have developed it with a cryptographically secure access code system in the first place. Sheesh!
Some lights have video cameras on them for this very purpose. They're programmed to tell how far back the cars are lined up based on the contrast between a car and the road. They have the added benefit of catching those who run red lights.
It's not amusing. It's just wrong.
What's funny is this is the exact same problem time-slice managers on OS'es have. Either let one side stay for an extraordinate amount of time and take few hits on switching, or give little slices which takes a big hit on swapping?
The best roads made are ones done by expert traffic engineers.. In the city I live near, there's 9 stop lights in a 3 lane (one way) road. The posted speed is 25MPH. However, if you go 22.5MPH, every one of them will be green,. Usualy there's an idiot or 2 that burns rubber out of one intersection, while I barely cruise up. By the time I hit the next stoplight, it's already changed.
"Who would want a device that turns lights at an intersection all red?"
Try the millions of teens who watch 'Jackass' all day.
i do something like that in really congested traffic. like, 15 mph on the interstate. i'll go 14. i'll end up with 500 feet clear in front of me, and people in the left lane will splash back into the buffer in front of me. i never hit the breaks once. it takes about 8 seconds to cover the buffer space to catch up, and sure enough the person behind me is always absolutely livid that i decided to let a space build up. and most of the time, they cut the person off to the left of me, cut close to me, flip me off in the mirror, peel out, and dart ahead. oy ve
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
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}
First, other emergency vehicles can or should be able to go through red lights. Motorists might not cooperate though since if they see all-red they may treat it as a 4-way stop.
They could however instead flash red and yellow alternately and quickly so that it would mean EXACTLY and ONLY that an emergency vehicle is approaching and ALL ways need to stop to give it right of way.
Gridlock isn't dependent on the traffic lights (remembering various stories about New York where the fire engines were in the middle of a block and it would take 30 minutes to go just over a mile.
Dude, when are you in that big a hurry and NOT on the way to a fire already?
When I'm GETTING AWAY from a fire!
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They already do that. They're called proximity detectors, and they determine when cars are sitting on top of them. They work based on induction.
Sometimes you can see where they were embedded in the road, especially if the light was retrofitted. Look for a patched-over hole in the pavement directly underneath where the first car would pull up at a stop light.
That is why some lights only change when your car is sitting there. For additional fun, you might be caught behind some dingus who, for some reason, stopped too far back to trigger the sensor. You're going to be there a while.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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
Easier solution -- with no technology.
I can turn red traffic lights green just by staring at them. The time required varies a bit from light to light, but eventually they all bend to my whim and turn from red to green.
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Quite simply this unauthenticated method of changing something so vital to our daily life is idiotic. Beyond that, companies that make this device and market it them to the average consumer as a "Hey, take advantage of the system" product should have the FBI on their door.
It all comes down to morals and concious. This is not some debacle about copyright, this is about abusing something that actually serves a good purpose for everyone (when have you heard someone complain about the purpose, the purpose not the actual function, of the stop light?). It's bizarre that some people could use this and actually feel good about it.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Explanation of Traffic Signal Preemption (Stoplight Changing)
The normal operation of any traffic signal controlled intersection is designed for the maximum and efficient throughput of vehicular traffic.
Unfortunately, a common occurrence at any intersection is traffic back-up, which can require many signaling cycles to clear. Without the ability to change the operation of the traffic signals themselves, police and emergency response vehicles can also be forced to sit in traffic, thus dramatically increasing their response times to crime scenes and fire or medical emergencies.
Furthermore, even without heavy traffic, a police or emergency response vehicle entering a traffic signal controlled intersection at a high rate of speed places all motorists (and sometimes pedestrians) at extreme risk.
The MIRT is an optical communications system that allows equipped vehicles to alter the normal operation of traffic signals.
An overview of a typical scenario is as follows:
A fire truck is dispatched to an emergency.
The fire truck is equipped with multiple emergency warning lights and a siren... The fire truck is also equipped with a preemption transmitter, which, in operation, is a high intensity forward-facing strobe light that is flashing at a rapid rate - much faster than normal attention-getting lights on the fire truck.
When the fire truck approaches within 1,800 feet (line-of-sight) of a preemption-equipped traffic signal controlled intersection, the preemption detector (normally mounted on the cross-arm that suspends the traffic signal) "sees" the fire truck's preemption transmitter and locks onto its flashing strobe.
Once the traffic signal "sees" the fire truck, it begins to initiate a "preemption sequence" of the actual traffic signal that is different from normal operation.
If the fire truck already has a green light, the light will remain green. Any other direction that also has a green light (usually the opposite direction) will first get a yellow light, then red.
When all of the other directions are then red, and the fire truck's direction is the only one that is green, the left turn arrow will illuminate (if one exists), and a brilliant white flood lamp mounted near the traffic signal will begin to flash. This flood lamp tells the driver of the fire truck that he now has control of the intersection, and complete right-of-way.
If the fire truck has a red light, any other direction that has a green light will transition to yellow, then red. When all the directions (including the fire truck's) are red, the traffic signal facing the fire truck will then turn green, along with the left turn arrow (if one exists), and the brilliant white flood lamp will begin to flash.
Once the fire truck has passed through the intersection, optical communication with the preemption detector (on the traffic signal) is lost. At that time the traffic signal will default back to normal operation. Conversely, until the fire truck passes through the intersection, it will have a green light, regardless of the time duration.
If several intersections are within the 1,800 foot range of the fire truck's preemption transmitter, they will all respond accordingly to the above operational description.