Seen this trick more than a few times here in SoCal.
Dad taught me this back in the early 1960’s. Back then the light trips were actual pressure plates embedded in the road surface. They were not always reliable.
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I’ve never seen anyone do that.
Maybe it’s regional?
There is something so delightfully self-satisfied in the dude’s laugh.
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The laughter was worth it. Heeheehee! Can’t wait to hear that in some indie game.
iirc there is a gizmo you can buy for your bicycle that trips the induction coils?
or http://www.instructables.com/id/Trigger-GREEN-Traffic-Lights/
I’ll pick up my free beer on the way out.
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Why do you wait, “well behind the line” instead of at the line?
My understanding is that the several buttons at an intersection are “polled” in sequence, so they need to be held down for a second or so to register. Slamming them may not register.
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Yup, same here. As the passenger it’s been my job many times. We wondered if maybe the sensors were wearing down, if that’s a thing.
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Yes, and it mostly works, unless the coil is broken.
There is also a switching system for emergency vehicles which can usually be triggered by flashing your high-beams half a dozen times or so. (Yes, most emergency switching systems are triggered by radio signals now but many of them still have the old optical sensors installed and working.)
But apparently not in Oregon. I was pulled over for turning left after the signal cycled twice without giving me a green left arrow. The officer said that the law required me to proceed straight through the intersection, then make a u-turn in the middle of the block. Maybe he was making this up, but he let me go with just a warning.
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Here in San Jose, CA, USA, it seems to be required to press them before the green light in order to get a pedestrian crossing light, although they don’t seem to change the non-pedestrian light timing, and the pedestrian light will often go solid “don’t walk” at or before the yellow light. This is true even in places where right turns have a slip-lane without a pedestrian light and left turns have a signal arrow that goes red rather than staying yellow or turning off to imply yeild, so there should be no cars crossing the crosswalk controlled by the signal if the buttons were turned into placebos, which would be better for pedestrians. I guess there just aren’t/weren’t enough pedestrians to think about their convenience in the light timing, so they used a single configuration that is as convenient as possible for drivers in the intersections where drivers might cross the crosswalk, or where the light timing has to be extended if the pedestrian signal is activated.
TL;DR: some cities with fewer pedestrians have pedestrian lights configured to be as inconvenient as possible for pedestrians.
This is the perfect “I beat the system” laughter.
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I have a similar secret trick to make red lights go green. But it takes up to a minute. On the bright side, I don’t have to leave my vehicle…
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They do work, in the sense that they achieve the desired result of placating pedestrians.
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Yeah! I’ve actually done this light trick myself, but I didn’t add the maniacal laughter. Gotta remember that for next time.
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I ride a bicycle, and I worked on traffic signals for ten years. Try to get as much metal as low down a possible. Leaning the bike can help. Stay as close to the sawcuts in the road as you can. Usually they are square. There is a loop in the car park where I work. 90% of the time I can trigger it by riding slowly just inside one of the corners of the loop. I think its the internally geared hub on the back of my bike which does it, it has a lot of steel inside.
On left or right turn lanes, the loops are often set up, to detect a queue, so a timer in software looks for them to be active for a few seconds before it will recognize the vehicle. So stop on one of the sawcuts, lean the bike for a bit, wait five seconds.
With a steel frame bike I can trigger loops fairly often. With aluminum I need that big hub in the back, though I have been considering building a device to do it for me. The loops just use a free running oscillator.
The car park loop is a good place to practice, because you can try different combinations.
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