Smart technology to outrage motorists!

I don't know if it's quite that, but there's a light, on a main road that I take every morning, that will be green as I crest a hill. Then as I go down the hill, with the entire area in my view, it turns red on me. This is at

4:45 am with no traffic in any direction.

I don't know if it has a sensor or what, but it sure is annoying!

Steve

72 Skylark

I should add another small observation to this.

Has anyone noticed that most municipalities now time stoplights to 'calm' traffic during peak hours? They're all timed to stop you at every DAMNED INTERSECTION! These lights used to be timed to allow traffic to free-flow, but no more. I guess city leaders decided they liked congestion and skyrocketing air pollution levels.

Ironically, cities that do this crap also complain about high smog levels. I would think that cars sitting and idling for minutes on end, then accelerating heavily from light to light MIGHT be making the problem worse?

Around here, I go out of my way to 'circle' the city when I need to get across-town to avoid traffic lights altogether. Of course, there is a stop sign every 30 feet around here as well, but it beats sitting in 8-lane traffic, breathing in enough CO to kill an elephant.

Even worse, with every new housing subdivision built, they seem to need their own 'exit traffic control system', AKA stoplighted intersection. Every damn time ONE CAR comes out, 500 others along the thoroughfare must all stop. Who came up with this bullshit?

-JD

________________________________________________________ | | | 1998 Laser Red GT RAMFM Member Since 1997 | | M-5400-A Suspension http:/207.13.104.8/users/jdadams || Subframe Connectors & Seat Bracing, Strut Tower Brace || 4-point K-frame Brace, Tremec T-45 & OEM 3.27:1 Gears ||________________________________________________________|

** I don't know if it's quite that, but there's a light, on a main road that I ** take every morning, that will be green as I crest a hill. Then as I go down ** the hill, with the entire area in my view, it turns red on me. This is at ** 4:45 am with no traffic in any direction. ** ** I don't know if it has a sensor or what, but it sure is annoying! ** ** Steve ** 72 Skylark

Yep, sounds like active electronics in action to me, Steve. City leaders apparently feel that drastic measures like this are needed to control those pompous speeders!

These things are so bad on one particular route I take out of Tracy, that I

*crawl* up to these lights, because I know that a 4-wheeler will trip the damned thing and it will turn red, no matter how fast I go.

I can remember when controlling traffic speeds meant setting lights to 35 mph in a 40-mph. zone along a main route, and posting signs to that effect. Stick to 35 mph, and you will make EVERY SINGLE LIGHT, and sail across town in 5 mins. flat. Does it work? You bet! I've only seen this in one place, but it worked like a charm. All of the 'sensors' that detected cars sitting were non-existant: only the 35-mph timers were used, making it easy to sail through every single light.

-JD

________________________________________________________ | | | 1998 Laser Red GT RAMFM Member Since 1997 | | M-5400-A Suspension http:/207.13.104.8/users/jdadams || Subframe Connectors & Seat Bracing, Strut Tower Brace || 4-point K-frame Brace, Tremec T-45 & OEM 3.27:1 Gears ||________________________________________________________|

How about setting them so if you do the speed limit you get all GREEN LIGHTS! How about rewarding someone for doing the limit instead of punishing everyone for those that speed. People bitch about the price of gas and the enviroment, how much gas gets burned up while I'm idling at a red light waiting for the NON existent cross traffic to go? Then I get to use up more gas to get to the speed I just smoked off on my brakes. I've often watched as a red light stops me then I sit, at an empty intersection. I watch cross traffic coming in the distance then I get the green and they have to screech to a stop. Set the lights then put a sign up saying "Lights set for 50mph" then most people will do that speed to avoid the red light. Sorry is that TOO simple for these numbties to understand? StuK

I don't know if we have it here in SoCal, but I know the lights along Beach Blvd in Orange County are synchronized and if you do the speed limit (40-50) you can go about 7 miles without a red. This is in the evening time, and otherwise it's a long parking lot. The lights are called "Smart Lights"

JD Adams wrote:

That's not gonna happen. It's about as likely as having the speed limit set properly in the first place.

that speed.

There is nothing morally superior about obeying an improperly set speed limit that was a number someone pulled out of their ass. Where the motivations behind it are most likely to generate ticket revenue or please the neighborhood busy-body at the end of the street.

I don't understand where this idea that obedence to rules because they are rules and nothing more being something worth rewarding. Especially when those making the rules have no clue how or the qualifications to do so properly, merely the power.

Sensor loop and dumb timing at it's finest. Better sensor technology is needed to fix this problem. However better programming with existing technology could make things considerably better.

about

speed.

Well I wasn't getting into the morality of the limits, that is a totally different issue. If I wanted to rage about that I'd be asking for my money back for the last ticket I got in a 60km zone in January, that last month went back up to 80km. When the road was gravel it was 80 then they paved it and it became 60(?) Two years later and countless tickets and fine dollars and rubbing of hands of insurance companies later,what has changed? Probably the people living on the road got sick of getting most of the tickets. Careful what you ask for as they say. Morality and physics are a weird mix.

Ah, that would be the rub now wouldn't it. Without rules there would be anarchy but the only way to change that would be to get the power yourself...then abuse it just like they would ;^) The only reason I consider obeying the speed limit is that I have no weapons to defend myself against the speed limits but to obey them. The cops and the law have all the weapons they need to catch me, lighten my wallet, remove the privilege of my license and entangle me in the kangaroo pen they call traffic court in this province. They could actually lower the fines if they just hired clerks or cashiers for traffic court instead of judges as that is what they really need. Judges? Wow that would be a job you could brag about to your law cronies... " I'm a traffic court judge" ( belly splitting laughter follows!) Actually they could laugh, "Look I get paid an excellent wage for being a robbed up McDonald drive through waiter with a gavel!"

Well I live rurally so when I'm out here in Bumf&#k nowhere waiting at a light alone at 1 in the morning I've actually driven through it like a stop sign. Programming is the answer for many lights like that or even just late night default to Yellow or Red flashing.

Anyway we are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship si still going to sink..... StuK

You mean like not following basic protocol and keeping line length under

80 cols? anarchy like that? I didn't suggest no rules, that's your straw man that you knocked down. I suggested rules that make sense, and thusly would be obeyed my almost everyone by default. Much like 80 column line length, it makes sense, so nearly everyone obeys it.Instead, there is this wierd concept, that obeying rules that are totally nonsense is somehow morally superior to disobeying them. It isn't. If I drink a glass of wine now or in 1929 it makes no difference as far as right and wrong is concerned, just that it's legal now and wasn't then.

Because of this rules are rules concept, we get these idiotic 55mph interstate speed limits that have a compliance rate of aproximately zero. Rules have to make sense before people can be expected to obey them in mass. They have to be something more than 'because the government says so'.

weapons to

have all the

In the USA anyway, driving considerably slower than the speed of traffic, known as obeying the speed limit on many roads, is supiciously slow.

Wouldn't work here in MA, people would blow right through the red, especially if there isn't any crosstraffic waiting.

Okay... "Smart technology." Let's make whole clumps of cars brake from 65mph to a stop, just because we don't like the 65 part. Let's make 'em sit for a time, and then start them up again. BUT, if they speed again, why, we'll just shut 'em down again.

And then we can go to Detroit and insist that they raise the fuel economy in their new cars.

Lunacy.

dwight

Clark is a fuggin moron. Traffic jams await.

--=20

I guess I'm just a straw knocking down anarchist. 80 columns! where's that stupid rule? protocol is just another name for rules. You're the one beating your chest. You're making me sound like I like stupid rules. Don't try to put put words in my mouth. People that know me well know I do that pretty good without anyones help.

This horse is flogged to death so I'm done. StuK

the

to

the

and

If driving is a privilege and not a right, then I think many of us would like to opt out of being forced to pay taxes that take care of the roads we drive on. I personally never thought of having to pay for something as a, "privilege". :-) Maybe we are, "privileged", in paying taxes too? lol

To respond via e-mail, simply take the, "REMOVEXX" out of my return e-mail address.

I didn't put any words into your mouth. I'm going to speak up when someone starts claiming that speed limit obedence is some kind of behavior to be rewarded when the speed limits themselves are in many cases not valid from engineering standpoint or properly reflect the will of the people.

80cols is simply an example of a good rule, one that makes sense, and is widely followed because it makes sense. Your posts being over 80 cols is what made me choose that example. If people want rules to be obeyed they have to make sense. They cannot be arbitary without sound popular basis and people made to comply through fear of punishment for use in a free society. Fear of punishment is not a good way to get the majority of people to obey laws. The best way is by the very fact the laws make sense, are needed for a valid purpose, and the vast majority is already doing as the law states without the law.

The will of the people doesn't reflect this fact: the main cause of freeway accidents is speed *differential*, slower drivers among faster drivers. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Autobahn, infamous for the some of the goriest fatalities on the planet. The FACT is that some people are simply not comfortable, for whatever various reasons, travelling at higher speed rates. The higher you raise the limit, the wider the spread of speeds are, and the more you invite the faster drivers to play lane change Grand Prix. And most of the faster ones are not as good as they think they are at manuevers.

So those posted limits may not be to your liking, but they are the best way to keep mortality rates to an "acceptable" figure. Rules need to be in place or we have anarchy. Break them and you gain new rights; the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney....

Oh yes it is, from the Bible to the California three-strike law.

The flaw with this statement is that you couldn't get ten people to agree on precise wording for a penal statute, much less 300 million.

CobraJet

Good point. However, hell will freeze over before the tax collectors ever give you or I an accurate accounting of how much of our payments go to this thing or that. To do so would invite precisely what you suggest.

In my case, it's school funds. It irks me that I've paid x amount throughout my life to fund educational systems even though I've never had and will never have children. Not much I can legally do about it, though. And once again, trying to get the tax jokers to issue a tax credit for childless people would be an exercise in futility. Instead, they give the breaks to parents so they can raise more tax payers.

You see, every coin has two sides.

CobraJet

Okay I'll bite one more time.

rule?

Please point out where I said the speed limit was correct or incorrect. You brought up that point. The whole scenario was hypothetical anyways. I was merely saying instead of PUNISHING PEOPLE ( i.e. fear of being punished) Reward them for doing good. Sort of half glass full laws instead of half glass empty. Nowhere in my statement did I bring up the morality of the law as applied, you did. I, in fact agree with you so your're preaching to the choir. Personally, I very rarely do the speed limit. I'm not afraid of speed (reasonable not excessive on public roads) I'm afraid of getting tickets fines etc. etc. As I stated my ONLY weapon against it is to DO THE SPEED LIMIT! Arguing with the Cop as he gives you his speeding ticket is futile as he is just there to his or her job, enforce the law. If you want to argue with the sanity of the law you need to go through a different and more tortuous channel. More power to you but right now I just need to get across town and Oh look damn, all Red lights.... to bad If I did the speed limit I get all greens.

Who says? You, I guess? I guess I'll blindly follow what you say? You see? A million people will argue that point. BTW, thanks for pointing that out I'll fix it shortly for the sake of all the other sheep that blindly follow that convention, I wouldn't want to upset the powers that be and be soundly punished for my usenet ettiquette faux pas! ;^) that was my freindly dig back at you.

Your posts being over 80

You are correct, If you are ever in England you will notice that there are virtually NO stop signs. They are all "Give Way" the equivalent of our Yeild signs. The law makers finally realized that no one actually stops for the Stop signs any more, they simply saw the way was clear and rolled through. Amazingly enough this kept traffic moving. Wow, what a revelation! So they got rid of most stop signs ( there are still a few for bad intersections) as the law was virtually unenforceable. StuK

CobraJet wrote in news:110720040001048925% snipped-for-privacy@streetracer.sfv:

All peanuts compared to Social Security. I've been paying into that scam for a gazillion years and I'll be lucky to see freakin' $10.

Joe Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC

I hear ya. The trick there is to be the sole beneficiary of someone who is presently collecting Social Security. That way you'll get money back at "some" point. Works for me.

CobraJet