 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
A lot of town and cities these days have 'smart' traffic lights, with sensors to detect cars waiting at traffic lights, which can trigger a change in sequence to reduce waiting times. The sensors I've seen are either optical or pressure pads in the road.
I'm fairly sure that some of the sensors at lights in my home town just pick up cyclists, as I can wait there for ages in a one bike queue as the other lights change a number of times. It feels like I have to wait until a car pulls up behind me.
Does anyone else experience this or am I just impatient?
I've only cycled in London once, but there were some lights which took forever to change color. I don't ever remember having the problem in Leeds, but then the traffic was much heavier too.
If the lights are biased against cyclists, we need to speak up because it will encourage cyclist to disregard traffic lights, a practice which is rather frowned upon, and one which gives cyclists a bad name.
I think it means they're not calibrated correctly and you can report to the LA... I heard that somewhere. Give it a go.
They're normally inductive loops of wire in the road that detect passing traffic. You need to ride over them, but often they're not sensitive enough for bikes (so report the issue and someone can look at it).
Sometimes there are overhead radar detectors on the traffic lights themselves. Bikes should be picked up by those if they wait in a "normal" road position.
And rarely there are little piezo-electric sensors in the road which bikes probably won't trigger; those sites are usually backed up by overhead sensors at the lights anyway.
Just report the problem to the local Highway Authority.
They're not pressure pads, they're ground loop induction detectors...
If they are visible, try riding over the edge of them (along the line running parallel to the road) as they will pick up better with the smaller metal mass there.
Of course this doesn't help if you're riding a carbon super bike!
A quick Google and I found a relevant page. I've filled in the online form so we'll see what happens.
I reported one (in a bus lane) to the council here and was told "It's difficult to get the induction loop sensitivity right* so that it detects X tons of bus [i]and[/i] a few kgs of bike. So we'll leave it as it is".
So basically. It got a bit hard. It's for bikes. We can't be bothered.
*I don't see why tbh, surely you set it so that it detects bikes, then you can be sure it'll also detect a bus 😕
There's a one lane bridge on my commute and it definitely isn't a ground sensor. Detects me every time, so there must be other types.
I've been able to trigger inductive loops with a bunch of keys (under road closure conditions), so that shows that they can be made to be pretty sensitive.
If youre ever trapped in a car park with no money to get out and there is an induction loop on the entry, with a barrier,Drive up to the entrance, from inside the car park and place a chunk of metal on the entrance induction loop , a car jack etc will do, the barrier will rise and you drive out, not forgeting your chunk of metal,just beaware of CCTV cameras though.
Had a look as rode through earlier and there are little cameras on the traffic lights.
Probably a little man presses a button when he sees something coming.