Adjusting a streetlight sensor

Mig21

Mig21

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Years ago I read on this forum that it's possible to get someone (the city? the region?) to adjust the sensitivity of streetlight sensors so that they will sense a motorcycle. Many of them will only turn green if there is a car on top or if you push the pedestrian crossing button. So you just sit there until you run out of patience and run the red :)

There's one like this right off the exit from my residential steet onto Bayview.

I can't find that thread any more. Anybody know who it is that I can complain to about the bad sensors and/or what the process looks like?

Thanks in advance.
 
When I come to a stale green and my bike won't trip the sensor, I just get off the bike and go press the pedestrian crossing button.
 
There is no weigh scale or anything like that, most are simply saw cuts with wire placed in them and a current run through. If your motorcycle sits high, doesn't have enough metal low down or you miss the mark it won't disrupt the current to put a call into the light to change (usually its the metal in your vehicle that disrupts the current). Not sure who you would contact (probably city engineering, but changing the frequency or possibly cutting some new loops might be a solution. In the mean time i would suggest riding right onto the lines if you can see them as this is your best chance or sending a call to change the light.
 
Thanks for the tip kruzuki, I was wondering why I'm not finding anything useful :) I guess I normally call it a light in conversation and I must have come up with "street light" just for searching :)
 
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Mig21 said:
So you just sit there until you run out of patience and run the red :)
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don't ever go straight or turn left on a red. if it's taking too long, make a right and detour from there
 
if it doesn't sense your bike, isn't it considered malfunctioning and you can proceed? Granted only if there's no one else around. ;o)
 
A passive magnet (^ that product) will work no differently than an equally sized chunk of steel. A traffic sensor is basically a big proximity switch that detects nearby electrically conductive material. A steady magnetic field will have no effect. A moving magnetic field might do something, but if you are stuck at a red traffic signal, you're not moving.
 
Brian P said:
A passive magnet (^ that product) will work no differently than an equally sized chunk of steel. A traffic sensor is basically a big proximity switch that detects nearby electrically conductive material. A steady magnetic field will have no effect. A moving magnetic field might do something, but if you are stuck at a red traffic signal, you're not moving.
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Up until about a year ago I used to deliver (to an installation company that did much of the north and east of Toronto) the special 3M material that they use to fill in the cuts in the road after running the detection loops. Yeah, there's a product specific to that. Whoda thunk it.

Anyways, I was talking to one of the installers who said that the new systems are less metal-mass or magnetic detection based anymore, but are now tuned to detect electrical impulses/interference instead. So, basically, the systems now detect your vehicle's electrical system, not the fact there's a chunk of metal or anything magnetic there.

Sure enough, I've tested the theory on both my bike and car - if you get onto a loop that doesn't seem to be detecting put the vehicle in neutral and rev the engine a little - the alternator interference seems to do the trick.

Of course, when you're on a motorcycle the key is to actually stop immediately ON the loop material, so look for the cuts in the road as you approach and stop directly on top of one side of the loop - pull in clutch and rev the engine a little to create the necessary electrical interference/signal and typically it'll trigger the system.
 
Honest Officer, I was just trying to change the light.....

gonna have to try that, there's a few lights that don't sense my bike. I used to have a hard drive magnet strapped to the bottom of my old bike.
 
Riceburner said:
Honest Officer, I was just trying to change the light.....
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I wasn't talking a "bouncing off the rev limiter" type thing, just something off idle. ;) Typically on my VTX if the light doesn't trigger when I stop I just slowly bring the bike up and down off idle - the electrical variance is typically enough to trigger things.

I've also done the same thing with my car - the one light at the end of our main street is a really PITA and this typically gets it to trigger (eventually) at times when it otherwise seems non responsive to just sitting there idling.
 
The magnets are only good for picking metal crap up off the road. Then you have to clean the crap you picked up off of the magnet. They don't do squat to the sensors. Anyways, isn't there some 411 number?
 
OK HERE'S A REAL STORY.

My street has a very long traffic light (does have pedestrian crossing buttons too but still is pretty long) If i didn't get off the bike to press the button id have to rely on a car have the light turn.

Called the city of Mississauga/Peel placed a complaint that it's endangering for me to do so because the lack of light change makes me run the red (which is a lie..but wtv) they said they'd investigate and blah blah blah blah.

Long story short, my buddy works as an electrician as a subcontractor and he ended up changing the sensitivity of the sensor the next time he was working in my neighborhood because, in the end, the city wasn't gonna do anything. I never got contacted back for it whatsoever and that was last year.

It now has worked ever since the sensitivity setting has been changed.
 
Call/email 311 for any problem in the city. They'll even send someone to pick up garbage.

I report bad sensors, pot holes, garbage, illegally placed pylons on the road, etc all the time.
 
breakablecomb said:
don't ever go straight or turn left on a red. if it's taking too long, make a right and detour from there
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How did you come to this conclusion?

If a light is malfunctioning (doesn't detect you), treat it as an all-way stop and proceed when it is safe.

Eventually you will run into places where the center island goes on for a few kms and the only way to turn around is to make a u-turn at an intersection in an 80km/h zone which would be even more dangerous.

I usually wait one pedestrian light rotation - but I also flip my camera on showing it in case it ever does reach the courts.
 
There are quite a few intersections that I know, where a motorcycle won't trigger the lights the way a car would. At night, if there are no other vehicles coming to trip the switch, I just treat the lights as malfunctioning and treat it like a Stop sign. Not a 4-way stop though, the people with the green will always have the right of way.
 
PLau said:
How did you come to this conclusion?

If a light is malfunctioning (doesn't detect you), treat it as an all-way stop and proceed when it is safe.

Eventually you will run into places where the center island goes on for a few kms and the only way to turn around is to make a u-turn at an intersection in an 80km/h zone which would be even more dangerous.

I usually wait one pedestrian light rotation - but I also flip my camera on showing it in case it ever does reach the courts.
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I would treat it as an all way except where this usually happens to me it's got a dedicated street car lane as well as traffic. Bit risky trying to squeeze through traffic to make an illegal left (since there's never a break in it at the times I'm riding) as well as watching for street cars.
 
unL33T said:
I would treat it as an all way except where this usually happens to me it's got a dedicated street car lane as well as traffic. Bit risky trying to squeeze through traffic to make an illegal left (since there's never a break in it at the times I'm riding) as well as watching for street cars.
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The city makes it a bit easier to detour especially when there are side streets every 500m or so. In the 'burbs, not so much.

In the end, the decision comes down to what makes sense and what is safer (obviously going through a live intersection with traffic flowing isn't the right choice for that situation) - there is no one definitive answer.

RichinOville said:
There are quite a few intersections that I know, where a motorcycle won't trigger the lights the way a car would. At night, if there are no other vehicles coming to trip the switch, I just treat the lights as malfunctioning and treat it like a Stop sign. Not a 4-way stop though, the people with the green will always have the right of way.
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Yup.. This is what I meant, other direction with the green will always have the right of way - unless the lights in their direction is also malfunctioning.
 
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