Posted on 04/18/2006 9:33:55 AM PDT by avg_freeper
A man who said he bought a device that let him change traffic lights from red to green has received a $50 ticket on suspicion of interfering with a traffic signal.
Jason Niccum of Longmont told the Daily Times-Call that the device, which he bought on eBay for $100, helped him cut his time driving to work.
"I guess in the two years I had it, that thing paid for itself," he told the newspaper Wednesday.
Niccum was cited March 29 after police said they found him using a strobe-like device to change traffic signals.
"I'm always running late," police quoted Niccum as saying in an incident report.
The device, called an Opticon, is similar to what firefighters use to change lights when they respond to emergencies. It emits an infrared pulse that receivers on the traffic lights pick up.
Niccum was cited after city traffic engineers who noticed repeated traffic-light disruptions on certain intersections spotted a white Ford pickup passing by whenever the light patterns were disrupted.
City traffic engineer Joe Olson said traffic engineers plan to update the city's Opticon system this year to block unauthorized light-changing signals.
There are many lights that are timed to stop the 40 thousand drivers going east-west to allow the four or five cars in cross traffic five minutes to crawl through the intersection. A sadist set the timing.
Heard this on the radio this morning. A ha ha ha ha.
So what happens who two cars going perpendicular to each other hit their devices at the same time, do both lights go green?
The question here is this...how many guys across the US are using a device like this? I'd be betting 30,000. When it takes you 30 minutes to travel 8 miles...you start to think of short-cuts...and this gadget is the device to have.
No, the devices just initiate a normal light change sequence
I have a couple of those types of lights in my commute too. Still faster than taking I-35 through downtown Austin during afternoon rush hour.
My record so far is an hour and a half to travel 3 miles.
One day a puddle of water that was leaking out of someone's broken sprinkler system beat me down a six block stretch. It would of gone farther but it evaporated.
I kid you not.
"Your honor, I never touched that signal.."
Idling cars use more gas, drivers have to buy more gas, and therefore pay more taxes.
Frustrated drivers make more mistakes and get more tickets and therefor pay more in fines.
Longer, more irritating commutes encourage more commuters into public transit, where they movements can be better controlled, and provide better leverage for transit strikes.
Need I go on?
Well, that depends on what the lights are attempting to do. It is well known in the utopia of Boulder, that lights are intentionally timed to obstruct traffic flow, because you shouldn't be driving, you should be taking the bus or bike or walking, you eevil gas guzzler. In that case, the lights are timed almost perfectly because they are, indeed, irritating drivers. As an added bonus, they have set up red-light cameras at the most-irritating intersections.
seriously, these astute city employees happened to be at the intersection and happened to know the truck and happened to put it all together.
Of course nothing is more conspicous than a white Ford pickup truck in Colorado. /sarcasm
It would be great if all cars had these devices, and the lights had the smarts to prioritize them. As it is, many people wait unnecessarily while there is no opposing traffic.
The embedded dectors, more often than not, trigger a regular, full cycle, which may be unnecessary.
And further more,....Lets do something about all those damn barking dogs.
LOL my lefty moonbat brother lives in Boulder.
Obviously he was trained by Washington (state) D.O.T.
If he had just driven another car occasionally, he'd be OK...
Roundabouts. Once people learn how to use them, they work very well.
"I often wonder these days with so much technology, why stop lights cannot be better set-up to deal with the flow."
Because you can't violate the laws of physics. Traffic light timing is always a compromise. You have a fixed set of geometrics to deal with, mainly distance between lights and the speed of the vehicles. If you could just focus on one car, you could run him anywhere without hitting a red light - to the detriment of all the other traffic. Smarter computers can only tweak things a little.
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