If your weight doesn't activate the green light, do you still go?
 

On my commute, 5-10% of the time I end up at the front of the left turn lane. It's weight activated. I scooch up into the walk path hoping that cars behind me will move up behind me to activate the light. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't activate. When it doesn't, I treat the light as a yield and go when there's space but then I feel like an ahole, leaving cars behind me stuck to wait another round of light changes. Nothing I can do right except for box turns?

You can go over and punch the crosswalk button, or wait for a gap in oncoming traffic.

Cuts in the road are usually not for a scale but for a hoop of wire that creates a donut shaped induction field and the best way to trigger it is to park along the wire so that your bike interrupts the maximum amount of the field.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9ebf55e791.png
(image from DriveSmartBC found on google)

I have a left turn light on my commute at the rural/urban interface. If nothing is around, then I might just ignore the light. But, I frequently find myself stopped. Electronic sensor that doesn't like my bike.

I usually scoot forward, then wave at the car behind me to come forward, and point to a place just behind my rear tire. Some understand what I want.

A lot of the urban left turns I encounter have been changed to flashing yellow light, and I definitely go when clear and safe.

Somehow I've lost patience for "Dead Reds". :bang:

My practice as well in TX and it almost always works.

In OK, the prior law allowed a cyclist to proceed if the light did not trigger. That was superseded by an Idaho stop law enacted last year allowing a cyclist to treat a red light as a stop sign. It’s a nice way to solve the problem.

I contacted my local road works department, and asked them to increase the sensitivity of one particular road loop when parking on top of the loop wire still did not activate the signal light. Thankfully, I did get a response back in that the maintenance department would increase the sensitivity a little higher, which did seem to help at that intersection later on.

Thank you.

I have always wondered where I should be placed to trigger the traffic lights. Directly on top of the seam.

On my commute route, there were a few intersections where I knew my bike didn't trigger the induction coils for the light. If there was no other traffic I just proceeded. If there was traffic I'd pull up onto the sidewalk and hit the crosswalk light, although, a couple of those don't work.

Quite a few years ago the city of Colorado Springs went to an optical system, and it works pretty well for cyclists.

I've never noticed my bike being able to trip an induction loop. I believe DOTs, Highway Departments, what have you, design them so they're sensitive enough for a motorcycle to trip, but nothing much less than that, otherwise shopping carts, bicycles, etc. would keep tripping them. Railroads use them to keep track of where their trains are.

This kinda hurts my heart. Nikola Tesla would not approve.

I hadn't thought of that. And my main commute route used to take me within a block or two of where they believe his lab was, between what is now the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind and Memorial Park. Plus I live by Tesla Drive.

The sensors can be made to be sensitive to bicycles. Often painting a symbol where to stop the bike.

I think I read earlier that Washington made a law requiring those sensors to be made sensitive enough for the bikes.

Sometimes dismounting and laying a metal bike over the seam adds enough signal to trigger. Downside is it doesn’t always work, and isn’t practical with some basket or pannier systems, in addition to the dismount and remount.

[[ Diversion warning ]]

When I ride, I have to go through a gate with a dipole detector loop. If I position my bike correctly, it opens every time. When I substitute my aluminum rims for carbon rims, I cannot get the gate to open, no matter how hard I try (until I press a manual over-ride button).

Does this mean that it is the aluminum in my rims that is causing the induction that is detected? I had always assumed it had to be ferromagnetic, but I guess this means that assumption must be incorrect.

They are supposed to trigger for a bicycle. Some of them won't trigger for a motorcycle. Whaddyagonnado except complain or just run it?

In the suburbs, assuming it's safe, you probably won't get pulled unless the cop is really bored. Somewhere like NYC, where it sounds like they hand out tickets to all parties like ticker tape, and every category of driver/rider thinks the other categories should get more tickets, I don't know.

its worse to deal with on a tandem. but I know what lights wont work and just ride up onto the sidewalk.

A friend of mine carried a magnet on a sting in his bike bag.
When he came to the light that did not detect his bike he would drop the magnet on pavement at the wire loop and then pull it back up, almost like a yo-yo. It worked every time I rode with him.

How big a magnet?

It's the electric currents around any closed path on your bike that trigger the sensor. Doesn't need to be ferromagnetic; only needs to conduct electricity. Any decent-sized closed loop of metal (such as the rims and/or the frame triangles themselves) ought to trigger it. Ferromagnetic metal might amplify the fields a LITTLE, but not by much -- not like an iron core to an electromagnet would -- since most of the space inside your loop is gonna be air rather than metal.

Lying the bike sideways, as some have mentioned, can work if it's a dipole sensor (so that the seam cut in the pavement looks like a single rectangle or oval). If it's a quadrupole (so that the seam looks like a figure 8 of some sort), then leaving the bike upright, right over the middle seam of the figure-8, is best. In general, the quadrupole loops, if they're set up correctly, are better at picking up bikes. This is because their sensitivity declines more rapidly with distance. Which seems at first like a bad thing, but actually means they can crank up the sensitivity to nearby objects, without accidentally triggering on a car in the next lane over.

Thanks.

I think I will devise one to make use of the Aharonov-Bohm effect (and change my user name to curl).

They don’t always trip for motorcycles either.
epoxy or double foam tape a magnet on the bottom of one fork leg is an old trick.

Indiana has a “two minute” law for bikes or motorbikes that allows for going through a red light - if it’s safe to do so - that doesn’t change for two minutes. Two minutes is an eternity.

I do. But then, I live in a state that doesn't criminalize reasonable, safe disregard of such stuff.

I occasionally get to a stoplight that has an interminable inability to recognize vehicles that have arrived ... car, bike. At a couple of common stops I use, weekly, I'll occasionally find myself waiting a couple of minutes and it hasn't yet changed. I'll go, so long as it's safe and after triple-checking to confirm all nearby traffic to ensure they're not about to do something silly.

This is really good information below! I will try that. I have to run a red light at the bottom of the hill I live on almost every time I commute.

I just read that a bicycle ticket here in CA has the same fines as if in an automobile, although there is a program to significantly reducing the fine/fees by taking a "safe bicycling" class. They also in some cases report the violation to DMV so points are assessed (and insurance may go up).

This is really stupid. But sometimes if you lay your bike down on the sensor it triggers it.

I have a couple of these on my commute route as well, and just with experimentation of positioning I figured out that's where to stop to trigger the light change.