Modern Buddy

Oh em geee! Last night i was stuck at a stoplight for 10 minutes, the red light kept skipping me. I was trying to turn left. I ended up just eventually turning right and making a u-turn. I has happened to me a number of times. Anyone else have this problem or know a solution?

I found this article online, explaining why it happens, suggestions on how to get noticed by the sensors, and a vid at the end with a magnet trick.

http://www.examiner.com/article/motorcy ... what-to-do

Depending on the kind of sensor, and how it's calibrated, sometimes they just don't detect a small motorscooter above them. My understanding is that the magnets don't really do anything... except giving the sensor a bit more metal to detect. I've had pretty good luck by putting my side kickstand down on the seam where the sensor is buried. If it's an intersection you go through regularly, you can sometimes get the city to recalibrate it to be more sensitive.

Pflower001 wrote:Oh em geee! Last night i was stuck at a stoplight for 10 minutes, the red light kept skipping me. I was trying to turn left. I ended up just eventually turning right and making a u-turn. I has happened to me a number of times. Anyone else have this problem or know a solution?

I found this article online, explaining why it happens, suggestions on how to get noticed by the sensors, and a vid at the end with a magnet trick.

http://www.examiner.com/article/motorcy ... what-to-do

Over in the FAQ, we have a post about this topic. Happened to me a lot too, note the part about how in California we can allegedly get it fixed!

Those are generally not calibrated to detect the small amount of metal in our scooters. If you can see the lines where the sensors are, try positioning yourself in different places, like off to the side, or at a slight angle. You can also contact your local department of transportation and see if they'll do anything about it. I contacted ours about a spot like that and they came out and marked the sweet spot. Since Portland likes to emphasize how bike friendly our city is, I mentioned that bicycles also couldn't trigger it. Failing that, you just have to find an alternative. If there's not much traffic, you can just go when it's safe. If that's not feasible, then your tactic of making a U might be your best option.

I find at inductive loops that rolling forward and back a few times at the front of the loops seems to help.

We have a few of these here, and sometimes if no vespas are available to help, one of us runs over and hits the walk button.

when solo I've either braved it at the yellow or just blatantly ran the light when it was clear. Neither are really recommended but the intersections were much smaller or had no traffic.

This usually happens closest to my house; I have to scout ahead to see if someone will be using the left hand turn lane or the straight ahead/right turn lane. I go straight through the intersection while most folks usually turn right, so I can't count on people being behind me setting off the sensor. Depending on how busy it is, I'll pop my scoot onto the side stand and race over to hit the crosswalk button. In other parts of the city, I'll pull just a little ahead of the crosswalk so a car behind me will move closer in hopes they set off the sensor.

We just have to be creative sometime in traffic maneuvers; if I ever get pulled over for it, I'm hoping Officer Krupke will be understanding when I say my scoot won't set off the green light.

The law here allows me to "run" the red light once I've waited for an "reasonable amount" of time. Which to me is as soon as it's safe

iMoses wrote:The law here allows me to "run" the red light once I've waited for an "reasonable amount" of time. Which to me is as soon as it's safe

Same here. I do this for red arrows also, i hate red arrows with heat of a thousand burning suns.


-duo