Traffic light sensors - How?

[Mark_h]

So... Many of the more modern traffic lights have an inductive loop buried in the road to check for the presence of vehicles. You can usually see where the loop is by the black line in the road.

Usually there is a bulky car parked over it triggering the sensor but from time to time there's just me on the bike. Sometimes I will trigger it, other times I will not. I've tried parking in the middle of the square, along an edge and on a corner but I've yet to work out how best to trigger them when you've not got a lot of metal around you.

Anyone know for sure where's best?

Corner, Edge, Centre, somewhere else?

[Owenski]

Apparently if you kill the motor then start it back up this has some effect...
I however also heard that married life is bliss so Im not sure what the believe anymore ;)

[Fallout]

If you eat spinach there's a high iron content and it also gives you large forearms.

I sat at a red light for about 3 minutes once with loads of cars behind me. Must've been one of those induction loops! Couldn't get it to go. Had a tin of spinach and no luck, so just rode through a red. Pretty stupid really to make a system that doesn't work for all road users.

[andrewsmith]

I'm sure BP uses a magnet on the cases or exhaust.
What I do often is spot the loop and give the bike a blip with the clutch in. Works most times

[Littlepeahead]

You have to shout 'Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy' three times. Well that's what my nephews do and they swear it works.

[Bluepete]

Get a big neodymium magnet and stick it on your dogbones. They work because the induction loop is affected by the magnet in the same way a large car does. It's a loop of wire in the ground which generates a current when metal moves over it. Same as a dynamo.

All the magnet does is generate a larger magnetic field, fooling the system. Works a treat.

Pete ;)

[mikerj]

There is a busy junction on my way to work where my only option is to go through the red light if I'm on the bike and no cars are waiting to take the same exit. I waited for 4 or 5 cycles of the lights the first time I rode to work before I twigged.

[MisterTommyH]

Just out of interest Pete, what is the law regarding this?

If I get to a set of lights and can't get the lights to change and there's nothing else around.... Am I supposed I just sit there? Or is it acceptable to look very carefully and creep out? (Assuming you don't have a magnet fitted).

I have been in this situation at an unfamiliar junction in the early morning and wasn't quite sure what to do?

[Mark_h]

Get a big neodymium magnet and stick it on your dogbones. They work because the induction loop is affected by the magnet in the same way a large car does. It's a loop of wire in the ground which generates a current when metal moves over it. Same as a dynamo.

All the magnet does is generate a larger magnetic field, fooling the system. Works a treat.

Pete ;)

Will this allow me to ride the arnco on slip roads too in a scalextric style? How big a magnet are we talking and where would I get one?


So given I have no magnet and typically the dynamo works by moving through a field if (I remember Mr.Flemmings stuff from school) guess I'm buggered as I have a low presence mass and no motion. Still none-the-wiser as to whether I'm better off parking up in the middle of the square, on an edge or in a corner.

[Spank86]

Best off in the centre of the induction loop but all you could really do legally is get off and push if you got to it and had no joy.

Revving the engine or turning off and on sounds like it might work, just.

[Bluepete]

ATS should eventually phase through each set, allowing for just this sort of thing. However, I appreciate that waiting in the pishing rain for ages at 3.00am isn't an attractive option! I have been known, in my pre-magnet days, to get off and wheel through.

Pete ;)