Tripping a traffic light, for motorcyclists

That’s exactly what I’m planning :blush:! Everyone I have talked to about this so far has recommended Team Oregon so that’s probably going to be step 1 for me.

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You’re saying the induced current won’t charge/discharge the capactive portion of the circuit enough to disrupt at least a few sensing cycles? That should (briefly) have considerably more effect. Now of course if the sensor circuit is doing some kind of Kalman filter approximation over several seconds then yes, of course, you’d be completely right, but I’m not aware of any road sensors that are that complicated. They’re very simple, and there isn’t even any subsequent reading confirmation on the part of the management system. In short, you’re not wrong about the circuit overall, but at the same time I suspect it is considerably more sensitive to moving magnetic fields than you’re giving it credit for.

First bike should be a “crash bike”, it will get dropped within the first year. :slight_smile:

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This brings back memories of waiting for a looooong time in the cccc-oooo-lll-dd weather for a light to turn green, then seeing the left arrows do their thing, but not the main green light!

When that stuff happens, I call it a stop sign and not a red light.

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I literally just walked in the door after waiting in vain (on a bicycle, not a motorcycle) for the light to change at an intersection a quarter mile from my house. I use this intersection two to four times a day, so tripping the signal is important to me. The city of Belmont, in its infinite wisdom, recently changed it from a regular cycle to a “cross street green for ten seconds if and only if a car is detected.” Sometimes I can ride in small circles to trigger it, but that seems unsafe.

I have two questions about the list: one, what is “a cycle” if the light never changes? And two, FIFTEEN MINUTES?

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Oh. That kind of tripping.

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There was an intersection near one of my previous jobs that was set up in such a way that it was easy to stop far enough back that you wouldn’t trip the sensor and it would never cycle to green if you didn’t. One evening I was stuck behind someone who had done this and a line of cars quickly formed behind us. Luckily there was enough room that I could swing out and around the guy in front of me and still enough room between him and the light that I could stop on the sensor and trigger a green. Probably made me look like a jerk, but we all got to go home that evening.

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I’d go so far as recommending to wait for getting your Class M, until you can ace the MSF course. I haven’t checked with this one, but there are many that also provide bikes (Buell Blasts are provided where I’m at as one of the local MSF’s has partnered with the local HD dealer), but when I was in Colorado the local community college had a handful of Rebels (or same/similar) for those that didn’t have their own wheels yet.

There are benefits to taking the course on the bike you intend to ride, to be sure.

Since the local MSF offers them here, I send every new rider there before helping them find a used bike cuz as @roomwithaview mentioned, you will drop your first bike. Probably your second as well.

I’ll then spend their first summer riding with them every Sunday, helping as we go. It’s really not until year two or three where you’ve got the muscle memory and experience to truly start enjoying yourself more often than shitting yourself. YMMV of course.

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What about putting the metal on/in the shoe?

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I’ve been hit from behind while parked up in a car. It’s just as fun as you imagine. :frowning:

You can get sensors that will constantly flash between high and low beam in the daytime. They can be a bit distracting to other drivers but they also notice the hell out of them.

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  1. Ridng a motorcycle is not very dangerous. Learning to ride a motorcycle is incredibly fucking dangerous, and requires two to five years of regular motorcycling to achieve. Physical skills aren’t enough, mental skills aren’t enough; it’s about getting both of them hardwired so deep that they continue to operate even when you’re tired and stupid.

  2. If, at any time, your survival is dependent upon another driver doing the right thing, you’ve already fucked up.

  3. The tyres make the bike. Don’t skimp on rubber. Worn-out suspension is also worth spending dollars correcting.

  4. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eyes on the safe place, not on the threat. Learn to use your peripheral vision.

  5. When in doubt, throw it in and try to stay chilled. So long as you keep your body relaxed and your eyes on the exit, the bike will balance itself through most situations and whip through most corners. Crashes usually happen after the rider panics, not before; nerves fail before traction.

  6. Save the dream bike for your second ride. Not only are you very likely to have at least a walking-pace whoopsie on your first one, by the time you’ve been riding for a while your idea of the perfect bike will change substantially.

(twenty years on two wheels, no broken bones, no spilt blood)

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All of that sounds like really good advice, I’m bookmarking both your post and some of @jamesnsc’s. Thank you!

EDIT: Bookmarking your comment as well @roomwithaview

If I had LED headlights maybe, as far as I can tell they would tend to shorten the life of filament bulbs.

Don’t know for sure though, that’s just based on what I know of filament bulbs in general, maybe somebody who’s used them can chime in?

With a similar track record:
30+ years, hundreds of thousands of miles, half a dozen bikes, only one(!) accident early on which I could have avoided but wasn’t experienced enough yet

AND I ride like the devil! (>100mph whenever traffic allows)

So I’ll expand a little bit on the points below as different techniques apply at different skill levels.

But don’t ever ride when you’re tired or stupid.

Nothing to add here, same for cars.

This is true initially, but I actually look all around, all the time, and it’s saved my butt a couple of times, usually when some other biker or ricer decided they needed to race me and we’d split around a semi or other “obstacle” and I did not know they were there (yet).

I’ll add that “flow state” is very important at speed. If you ski, surf or snowboard you know there’s good and bad days, don’t even ride at all if you’re feeling out of sync. Or if you have to be really super careful/paranoid, (well, that’s always, but I mean 100%. :slight_smile:

My one accident was actually my third bike, got side-swiped by a guy coming through my blind-spot. (Before I was experienced enough to look everywhere, all the time!)

Some additional notes:

You will get pushed out of your lane at least once or twice (or more) a week if you ride a lot, don’t sweat it. Why not? Well, you always have an “escape route” or two, right? (Right?!?) Flow state FTW, you won’t even notice after awhile!

Assume you and your bike are invisible. Remember all the invisible man movies where he’s getting bumped into? Yep, that’s you! (Well, not really, but if you drive like it could be then you’ll be fine when in fact you are not seen. :slight_smile:

Drive to be seen! Can’t emphasize this enough. You know that triangular blind spot every car has? (Going to be Ameri-centric here for a bit, you lefties know what to do). Stay to the right of your lane so the driver can see you in the mirror easily, as you pass switch to the left side of your lane so you cross the blind-spot as quickly as possible and maximize the distance between you. (Unless there’s somebody else right there in which case split the difference and go down the middle, but quickly, blip the throttle to keep your exposure to a minimum.) Does that mean you’re weaving a lot? Why yes! Yes it does! People visually “zone out” if they don’t see motion, YOU WANT TO BE SEEN!

Drive faster than the rest of traffic if at all possible. It cuts your bogey count almost in half and keeps you from being the zone-out case. Not crazy faster, don’t scare the little old people, and watch your “envelope” - that’s the space where you have to take evasive action if somebody enters it. And that means the right/left thing above changes depending on your speed. I.e. you just stay at the left if you’re going a lot faster than the folks you’re passing. (There’s a middle ground where I actually weave gently between left and middle.) As a general rule, <10mph faster full-lane weave, ~10-15mph faster half-lane weave, 20mph faster no weave, >20mph faster is stupid unless you can get over one more lane.

Maximize your envelope and DON’T EVER PANIC! If it’s a three lane road and you’re passing a guy in the slow lane, go all the way to the fast lane (if you can) to pass. You never know if they’re slow because they’re drunk/stoned/whatever. And be prepared to have no envelope at all. I’ve had one mirror scraping a wall and the other pressed in by somebody’s side window, at 70mph. (No shoulder and high-speed bumper-to-bumper - really hate that, chain-reactions are just nasty!)
But no accident (other than a scraped mirror) because I saw them moving into me and was already accelerating out of there to squeeze between him and the guy in front of me and because I didn’t panic. (Now if the guy in front of me had hit his brakes I’d have been sitting on the blind guy’s hood - lucky me! :slight_smile:
Similarly with my one accident, I actually did see him coming into me at the last possible second and pulled that leg up super-fast so I didn’t get it pinned. We were going 45mph or so, but that simple action meant I ended up sitting on top of the bike as it went down and basically rode it like a sled until we finally hit a curb. (Yeah, it helps to be in good physical shape no matter how long you’ve been riding. Don’t get a bike that’s too heavy for you to lift from the ground while still astride, at slow speeds that “foot stomp” will save you countless times from oil, dead leaves, and spilled whatever.)

Your envelope is a simple equation of time, space, speed differential and riding conditions. If your shoulder is soft gravelly nasty shit, don’t include it in your “space I can escape to”. But don’t rule it out either. I’ve jumped a curb at 80, ducked under a sign and hopped right back into traffic without skipping a beat because at that moment in time that was my only possible escape route when another blind guy came sweeping across four lanes of traffic from the merge lane. Again, always look all around you, threats can come from any direction. It also helps to do some off-road riding even if just as part of your training so that you know how the bike is going to handle when you hit unexpected things. Besides intentionally jumping that curb I’ve also clipped cinder blocks, empty buckets, traffic cones, lumber, big chunks of tires, and once a cow skull, (somebody’s lost hood ornament?) etc etc, always in scenarios where I wasn’t able to see far enough ahead to spot it and it got hit or fell just right to shoot into my lane where I simply couldn’t avoid it completely. (You ride enough miles you get to see wierd shit, don’t let it kill you!)

On to riding ahead: always look as far ahead as you can, through, under, over, whatever, and get out from behind that big truck, (unless it’s really frickin cold and you’ll freeze. :slight_smile: Look at other people’s tail lights, as far ahead as you can. That’s how you know about debris in the road, the guy with a bumper about to fall off, the trailer losing its load, and that hidden cop, well before you need to react. (In fact you shouldn’t need to “react”, because by the time you get there you should already be as far away as possible from that eddy current in the flow of traffic, and ready to move further if necessary!)

And do, always, wear appropriate gear. Even in the heat of summer I’ve got boots, jacket, full-faced helmet, gloves, etc. But I’m comfortable, because the jacket is designed for riding and well vented, and if I expect slow traffic I can open it and/or wear a “cool shirt” (funky material that you soak in water and it keeps you cool for hours at a time), and the gloves and helmet are also well vented. If I can go even 10mph I’m good!
As they say, “dress for the slide, not for the ride.”

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Agreeing in general, but I thought I’d emphasise this one. :slight_smile:

The level of situational awareness required for motorcycling is similar to that required for boxing. It isn’t a brain-off-and-chill situation. You need to see the punches before they land.

I habitually ride about 20km/h over the limit, and when I’m out having fun I’ll be up around 150-200km/h. Despite that, I’ve only paid two speeding tickets in twenty years. Once by a fixed camera at a limit change when I’d only been riding a couple of months, once by an exceptionally well-hidden speed trap off the side of a bridge.

If you can’t see the cops and cameras before you get to them, you are not paying sufficient attention for the speed you are doing.

So many mornings of late I have gone yep, getting in the Prius for the commute today lately cause I have not been sleeping all to well and/or it is raining COLD fucking rain in the AM.

So far I have avoided dropping the big beast on the road but my little 150cc twist and go I had to start with… my endorsement wasn’t barely 24 hours old and I hit a patch of sand on the road coming up to a red light. The bike dropped before I could even think oh shit. Luckily it was quite a low speed and I opted to wear the pants cause my left knee hit the pavement a bit hard. I walked the bike over to McFood at the corner and just had some coffee and ice cream to let the adrenalin wear off a bit.

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