San Jose CA, Red Lights Don't Change for MotorCycles, Scooters and Bicycles - SJ Fix Your Lights!

San Jose Mercury News Mr. RoadShow challenged me to try a Magnet on the bottom of my motor scooter to see if it would change traffic lights from red to green. I used a Neodymium Magnet. Remember that magnetic field strength diminishes by the "cube" of the distance away from the magnet, I am not too optimistic about the success of this test. See for yourself

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• san
• jose
• magnet
• scooter
• bicycle
• motorcycle
• red
• light
• green
• neodymium

[efhn]

Try a steel plate under your scooter-not a magnet..

[Nomagnets]

The bottom of this scooter is already steel. Adding more steel would make it, well, more like a car and thats the whole point of this video. Steel does work!

[Itmustbes2]

....but that would be against "THE LAW"!

[Omen4500]

....run it.

[sweeperdave1]

The trick is to contact San Jose traffic engineering - 408-535-3850 (ask for Traffic Engineering) and give them the intersection and a good description of which sensor needs adjustment.

[sweeperdave1]

The traffic sensors in San Jose and elsewhere in the bay area are capacitance detection activated. They don't depend on ferris metal (metals that contain iron such as steel). Even aluminum will activate them. Magnets merely add a few more pounds of metal. Traffic engineers can adjust the sensitivity of the detection loop and allow the sensors to detect smaller bikes. Even carbon bikes with the small amount of alloy material can activate properly adjusted sensors.

[CubeComputerChannel]

This clearly was a detection issue though in some cases, the light will detect you, but not change when there is nobody coming the other direction due to faulty programming of the signal. Signals like these should change when there is nobody crossing on the opposite side of the road after a given amount of time. I occasionally test the signals where I live to make sure they detect bikes properly, and there is one which behaves like this even with cars, let alone bikes and scooters.

[Itmustbes2]

Yes, the reason I didn't show the whole magnet is because it had the name

of the vendor on it.

[scootergrisen]

Great video. But is there any reason why you are holding your hold in front of the magnet. I would have liked to see it. It looks huge.