What's funny in certain countries (right now for me the GCC) is that people believe if you flash with your brights at the right speed and frequency it will automatically set them to green, or shorten the interval on the opposing traffic direction so it goes green for you sooner.
Do other people believe this? I have watched people try for over 60 seconds or more until giving up, and I find this hilarious even today.
This works for temporary traffic lights here in the UK (I've just googled and some people seem to think they are motion sensors, but from my experience they aren't)
If it's dark and quiet, I think both sides go to red, then when a light is detected, that side goes green. Quite common knowledge in the UK
No, sorry - they are motion sensors. I can trigger them on my bike, with no lights involved. You're suffering from confirmation bias, and not taking into consideration the fact that the lights change when they detect your vehicle, this is usually going to be coincident with you flashing your headlights, but the former is the cause, not the latter. It's a common misunderstanding, though.
In the US at least, that is how a significant number of these systems work. It's rather unlikely they would get the right frequency to trigger it, but it's certainly possible.
This is spot on and how it was where I grew up and was a volunteer firefighter. IIRC, the visible strobes on our equipment we referred to as "opticoms"
Opticoms can be preempted with a strobe light using an IR filter; they don't need to receive visible light to activate.
If the Opticom sequence is trivial, the hardware is easy. If its a complex pattern, a 555 timer is required.
Sitting outside your local fire station recording video of the strobe pattern on an emergency vehicle should be sufficient to determine the necessary pattern (you step through frame by frame to identify the sequence).
The above is informational only. One should keep in mind that today, most traffic lights will log the preemption with their central controller, and that unauthorized use is illegal in most jurisdictions.
In the UK a lot of taxi drivers seem to believe this, the superstition is reinforced whenever they happen to flash when the lights were about to change anyway. It's also a comfort thing, similar to a placebo button[0] - people want to believe that they have some control over the mundane parts of their lives.
Camera based detection systems track and detect based on vehicle headlights at night. It's theoretically possible that flashing your lights will ensure that your vehicle is detected, but it won't make the lights change any faster as people presume.
I live on the outskirts of a relatively small city in the US and we've had a system like this for at least 15 years. It also works for other types of emergency vehicles (e.g. it allows firetrucks to get to fires faster too).
The traffic lights in Sydney are managed in a way to give priority to late-running public transport.
I was impressed to find out the traffic light system in Sydney, Australia (Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Coordinated_Adaptive_Tra...) has been exported around the world to cities such as Singapore, Dublin and Hong Kong.
Why doesn't the signal set all lights to red, leaving the junction clear for the ambulance to go through?
The best reason I can think of is if the idea is to improve traffic flow in general in favour of the ambulance (e.g. allow cars in front of the ambulance to move on through the lights), but that quicklt becomes a much more complex problem.
The laws on whether ambulances must stop at red lights and stop signs vary by locality.
It's almost always legally your mess if you don't stop at a traffic control device and are then involved in a collision — most laws and various insurance or service policy requirements tend to require "due care" or "prudent" or other such wording, and collisions are usually considered an adverse indication.
I've always wanted the traffic signal in front of me to be green on approach.
This reduces the numbers of stopped cars in my path.
Some of the drivers of the stopped cars at intersections will attempt or will perform odd or normally-unexpected maneuvers, sometimes leading to collisions. But mostly the herd in front of me scatters short distances, and generally resulting in intersection gridlock.
It's common practice in some areas to avoid using the siren in certain situations, such as when passing to the right of the bulk of (stopped) traffic waiting on a red, using the breakdown or turn lane at an intersection, for instance. Some folks will hear the siren and immediately block that lane, or they might turn into and collide with me.
The local traffic preemption systems all include a flashing indicator — a rotating red beacon on a cross-arm or a pole, for instance — indicating that the preemption request has been accepted and is occurring. This tells me that the other lights are all red. Or it tells me that I'm approaching a non-preempted light, and that the green in front of me might go red.
If the traffic lights are red and there's no preemption and no open and no bypass lane, then some of the folks at the front of the herd will inevitably not break that red, meaning local traffic gridlock, meaning that the ambulance waits (with the siren off) for the light to change.
Just curious what you mean by 'some of the folks at the front of the herd will inevitably not break that red'.
I often wonder what I should do when I find myself stuck someplace where I'm possibly in the way of an ambulance at a light.
Most of the time it's as simple as everyone pulling to the right and letting the ambo through the middle, but there's many situations where it just isn't obvious what everyone should do.
It would be great if there was an illustrated guide out there somewhere. I may have to look around.
When you're driving you either pull over and slow down (if it's safe to do so); or you keep driving at a safe speed and pull over when it's safe to do so.
If you're at a traffic light you can either try to move to the side without crossing the line; or you can stay where you are and allow the emergency vehicle to sort it out; or you can cross the line if a police officer directs you to do so (and blue lights is not a direction).
That's why EMS drivers love Opticomm and other traffic preemption devices -- The direction that you are traveling gets a green light -- keeping traffic in the direction that you're moving flowing (so, in theory they merge to the right, but, that's another topic for another day) -- and you get protected turn signals (so that traffic ahead pays attention to the red lights at the signal, not your red lights that they may not be able to see or notice.
The short answer is that we will expect you to move forward and to the right whenever possible. Above all, we don't want you to put yourself into a dangerous position.
If you're at a red light with an emergency vehicle behind you, the best course of action might be to make a (safe!) right on red and then go around the block to get back on your original course.
Because I can proceed directly through a green light. The other directions will never be green at the same time. If the light is red, I know nothing about the other directions, and have to stop and 'clear' the intersection before proceeding through.
You generally don't want vehicles in the way to stop. You want them to keep moving, at a safe speed, and get out of the way. It's easier for a car to get out of the way if it's moving (it can pull to the side of the road and slow down or stop) rather than if it's stopped at a junction.
As far as I know in the Netherlands you get aside or stop when you see the strobe and hear the siren, to let an emergency vehicle pass, it is also allowed to run a red light.
This sounds like an overly-expensive implementation of the simple strobe-based signals used in the U.S. at nearly every intersection I've been through.
The old ones work by turning all lights red which is great for a low density and organized traffic system and make it non-beneficial to hack them unless you are immune to tickets.
If there is traffic crowding and narrow lanes or lane sharing then the ambulance needs the drivers in front of it to also realize they have right of way and the obligation to continue moving out of the way.
This is a common problem in older US/European cities where the streets have not kept up with capacity and are not as wide as would be required by current rules.
Do other people believe this? I have watched people try for over 60 seconds or more until giving up, and I find this hilarious even today.