I wonder if Harry is serious or teasing us.

 

Heard another story on the news last night regarding these red light changing devices.
They are supposedly going to be banned in all 50 states soon.

I am not convinced they work. Has anyone tried one?

Here is a link to the Washington Post article.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...60005_2003nov3

 

I heard about it in the news. They are illegal for us private citizen hacks. Only works for lights that already have the sensors installed. Many locales probably don't have lights with those sensors. I suspect, only the larger metro area's do.

A better idea would be a device to disable the cops when they are chasing you down for a speed tix. Any electrical engineer's out there???

 

Also saw this on the news. Found this site yesterday.

http://www.nostoplight.com/overview.html

I'd be pretty confident that the units do work as described, but as mentioned, it'll depend on whether or not your municipality installed them. I live in a smaller metro area (80,000 in my city) and we do in fact have the sensors on the light, but mostly on state maintained roads.

 

Whether the devices in themselves are legal or not, their use, according to what I have read, would be in violation of laws already on the books just about everywhere against interfering with traffic. As stated previously, they work only with signals that have the receivers, and the latest receivers evidently use rolling or constantly changing codes (like garage door openers).

 

Jas...I was just messing. I can't imagine having such a crazy device even if it was legal. I have many cop friends down here and not one of there patrol cars have such a device. Can you imagine the liability for a police or fire dept if it's use results in an accident .

 

Yes, the Fire Dept. and Ambulance's use a device that sends a IR signal to a sensor on top of traffic light poles, the devices are from 3M and Tomar, the 3M version is the Opticom (scroll to the bottom of the page) while the Tomar version is the Strobecom II and the Sensors look like THIS.

On older intersections which ever way the signal is received the lights including the turn signals turn green, but on the brand new intersections all the lights turn RED because there have been times where two emergency vehicles approach the same intersection where both lights are green and you can guess what happened from there. As for myself I will also try this device, the only thing that makes me think is the 3M Opticom cost about 1,500 dollars each, and that is why police cars don't have them only rescue vehicles.

 

Friday Nov 7th 12:50 p.m.
It's legit ... It's on CNBC right now... crazy dangerous.

 

It is true...CNBC is doing a segment on it right now. the cheaper 'customer' version was made for smaller police departments that can't afford the expenseve 3M one. They are trying to limit the sales to law enforcements and fire departments.

 

Great, now all we need is this to become a mainstream thing and traffic will be even worse.

 

David,
So what you are telling us is that contrary to letting users through intersections by turning lights only for their direction of travel green, the device will turn all directions red. Well, to get through then, all you need to do, if there was traffic ahead, is drive on through on the wrong side of the street and run a red light. Cool. I guess even emergency vehicles wouldn't use the devices on one-way streets though!

 

i got one just for the hell of it to see if it works. on lights equipped with the receiver, it absolutely does work and just cracks me up. truth is though, i doubt i'll keep it and if anyone is interested in buying mine, lemme know (used one night for fun).

 

I was just saying that about 95% of intersections that have sensors on them the lights will turn GREEN in your favor, and the other 5% of intersection the lights will turn RED in all ways until the sensor can't read the IR signal. So if that happens just unplug it, and the signals will cycle normally.

And with others saying it works I guess I'm sold on that it works.