I picked this print up a while back:
it’s naturally clipped at the bottom, no idea why…
1 Like
If you want to go someplace with traffic cameras on traffic lights you need to go to a place with traffic lights. There isn’t even electricity along the 49 from Reno to Sacramento.
Yea, only in Auburn, there are about a dozen lights along 49 in Auburn, otherwise I try to stick to the twisties that mother nature was so nice to create and some other bloke was nice enough to pave into submission.
It is beautiful up there. Trout fishing, panning for gold. Beware mountain bikers.
Which is completely mis-leading, unless they expect everyone to drag a bit of metal around under their vehicle. Inverse square law and all that… (Especially for dirt bikes.)
I’m still healing up from a “sudden stop” in 03 (just had another back surgery on Wednesday in fact, which will likely lead to another series if 'em). I tend to wear the same gear on the road as I do at the track - one piece leathers, back protector, proper boots, gloves and lid. I came off once at 120+ and only had a wee bit of road rash on one finger from gripping the road to maneuver my body around to align it for impact.
When I’m on the supermoto I admittedly tend to wear shorts. One thing I hate riding in is jeans. Those little white cotton fibers are murder, get in your legs and are hell to get out and do nothing but cause infection with no added benefit of protection if you go down.
So yea, sorts or full body armor for me.
I keep an eye on the drivers head and the drivers side front wheel. People tend to go where they look - especially motorcyclists, hence the problem with target fixation - but the front wheel is the real eye into peoples intentions, its angle and if it starts to move - but GD I hate those spinning wheel rims that keep moving after a cage has stopped. Dive me nuts those do!
But they aren’t going to review the footage unless they have a reason to. There is no way they have people reviewing all the film from each time the light sensor is tripped.
Just get a bicycle light and clamp it to the forks.
1 Like
Especially if you include the Orwellian cameras mounted on MUNI buses who’s footage is reviewed to issue bus lane violations.
Road sensors are AC inductive loops. A magnet isn’t going to do any more good than any other piece of metal, and depending on the magnet’s composition might be significantly less helpful. Conductivity is more important than magnetism. Copper would probably be the best material to use.
As for emergency vehicle light changers - not many places still use them. While they save time for the first vehicle going through, they really fuck up the flow of traffic for anyone coming behind them. It’s not very helpful to have a squad car get to a house fire in two minutes and then have the fire trucks stuck at a snarled up intersection five minutes out. Also, they work on coded signals, not just any ol flashing light. You might think that flashing your lights is helping, but it’s probably just confirmation bias.
Bucket - who worked as a software contractor doing traffic control in a southern California city many moons ago.
4 Likes
Does metal in motion help at all? I was taught to place the bike on the sensor and give it a rev, the idea being to get as much metal spinning through the field as possible.
No idea if that actually works.
Bike-ignoring traffic lights aren’t that common in my neighbourhood. Bike-ignoring automatic boom gates at parking lots, OTOH, are routine.
Some are AC, some are DC. At rest your statement is correct, however, the magnet is in motion as the vehicle comes to a stop and so induces a much stronger field disturbance than anything else can.
Pretty much any place that doesn’t have camera-based traffic-control does.
If the intersections are independent then this is (slightly, but not really) true, but most systems are networked these days.
Generally true, but there’s only about half a dozen patterns in use by default and I’ve never heard of any municipality bothering to change them. Also, many of them will still acknowledge a non-coded sequence as a safety precaution.
Years ago, I sent a letter to my state representative about traffic lights, and I got back a letter from the state dept of transportation.
Basically, the letter said that they considered a light that didn’t change for a motorcycle “defective” and hence you should treat it as a stop sign like other broken lights. I figured this was a good letter to show any police when needed!
The state has since actually passed a law about this.
1 Like
Portland has little blue LED lights that turn on when you are activating a sensor, which are also clearly marked, not to brag. 
Also, if you’re going to complain about the city spending money on these gadgets, you have no right to rant about cyclists ignoring red lights. The LEDs also help motorcyclists, who frequently have difficulty triggering signals.
Portland is also experimenting with painting bicycle symbols over a neon green background on the pavement above signal loops.
Joseph Rose: Green. Yellow. Red. Blue? Portland's new traffic-light experiment comes in peace (video) - oregonlive.com
1 Like
Sorry roomwithaview but Bucket is correct on every point. Embedded road sensors are simply big inductive-capacitive oscillators. The combination of the inductance of the loop embedded in the road and the capacitor in the controller box sets the oscillator to some natural frequency. The introduction of metal into the inductor’s field changes its inductance thereby changing the frequency of the oscillator. The control box monitors the frequency and, based on some threshold of change, signals the presence of a vehicle.
While it’s true that a magnetic field moving over the inductor will induce a current in the wires, that does not change the inductance. As Bucket said, a magnet is no more effective than any other equivalent metal mass.
That being said, the shape and proximity of the mass does effect the inductance so the kickstand thing might work. I personally favor putting my motorcycle diagonally across one corner of the sensor. That seems to work but I’m not immune to confirmation bias any more the the next rider.
1 Like
Is Portland as “cool” as “they” say?
How’s the weather & mountain roads?
I, personally, love riding in the rain.
1 Like
I don’t ride a Motorcycle but getting a motorcycle licence (and at least renting, if not buying a motorcycle) is on my list of stuff to do this summer. Yes Portland is pretty fucking amazing, I tend to forget that sometimes but whenever I come back from being out of town I’m always reminded of how much I truly love this city. The weather? If you like a good amount of rain (which I do), amazing!
Gunna do something like Team Oregon? Any MSF course to waive the proficiency portion of Class M is definitely worth it - & they have an intermediate course as well.
You can find a decent looking first bike for about a grand up there.
Though you’ll probably end up spending again as much on safety gear by the time you’re done.
1 Like
For most of the 90s, I assumed (quite wrongly, I’m sure) that they were pressure plates, like the things that opened the front door of the neighborhood Alpha Beta in 1983.
