Cracked said: Finally, if you're commuting through a city, there's bus exhaust. If you don't think that's an issue, try this: Next time you're out walking the streets and a bus comes up to a red light, just step right in there behind it and wait. Then when it pulls away, go ahead and jog with it for a few miles. You'll show up to work smelling like you just went down on a Transformer.
The best quote of all!
I love this image!
Cigarette butts. He forgot cigarette butts. Whenever someone tosses one out the window, so it can bounce along the roadway, they inevitably bounce up into your jacket. I can't count the number of times I've had to dig a burning cigarette butt out of my clothes because the moron in front of me was doing his part to start fires.
cracked said:This is a picture of my helmet hanging on the handle bar of my bike. In the few hours I spent visiting my parents, a bird built a nest in the helmet.
Maine Dragon Flies. They might as well be baseballs.
A june bug cracked my visor the other day. That was a "wake you up moment".
foxtrapper wrote: I love this image!
Some of those cigarette butt throwers, particularly at night, make me want to blast past them and then throw down a lit road flare. Not that I actually would, but it can look like they've chucked a smaller version of one at you...
Cigarette butts are the least of it...
I have a helmet my kids play with that has a huge gouge across the shield where the left eye is and deep into the shell from something heavy a E36 M3head in a tractor trailer tossed out his window. Might have been a bottle. I would have earned myself a manslaughter conviction if I wasn't so busy trying not to go down after getting my bell rung.
One of the worst "lists" I've seen on Cracked.
They're magnetic, and more weight in ferrous material means more likely to be picked up by the sensor.
It helps to park right on top of the edge of the coil, if you can see where it was installed. Put the metal you've got right in the magnetic field.
I can get my bicycle to trigger a lot of them that way, though I think that a lot of the newer ones around here have been specifically made more sensitive for bicycles (they even put little bicycle icons right on the spot to mark it). YMMV.
All I know is I hate being stopped on a bicycle or motorcycle and wondering how much attention is being paid behind me...
ransom wrote: All I know is I hate being stopped on a bicycle or motorcycle and wondering how much attention is being paid behind me...
That's why I flex, hard, at every light I'm at. You never know...
Putting your kickstand down on the sensor helps. So does a reckless disregard for the law.
dogbreath wrote: They're magnetic, and more weight in ferrous material means more likely to be picked up by the sensor.
More mass of ferrous meterial, you mean. So the author's assertion they're set off by weight is incorrect.
Osterkraut wrote:dogbreath wrote: They're magnetic, and more weight in ferrous material means more likely to be picked up by the sensor.More mass of ferrous meterial, you mean. So the author's assertion they're set off by weight is incorrect.
They actually work on the same principal as a metal detector. A radio signal is transmitted through one antenna and received by another. Anything metal, ferrous or not, distorts the signal received by the second antenna.
Toyman01 wrote:Osterkraut wrote:They actually work on the same principal as a metal detector. A radio signal is transmitted through one antenna and received by another. Anything metal, ferrous or not, distorts the signal received by the second antenna.dogbreath wrote: They're magnetic, and more weight in ferrous material means more likely to be picked up by the sensor.More mass of ferrous meterial, you mean. So the author's assertion they're set off by weight is incorrect.
So those kickstand magnets they sell don't really work?
At a guess, no. Movement does though. Stop on the sensor loop. Then pull up about 6 inches every few seconds. Every time you change the distortion, a new green request is sent to the system.
As I mentioned on another forum where this link was posted, it seems most of this guy's motorcycle problems would be solved by riding more (fewer bugs, wasp nests, etc) and a full face helmet thats brought inside at night or when away from the bike.
I lol'd at the heroin line.
I know of a couple lights near me that won't trigger via motorcycle, or at least mine. I've learned how to run them so as not to set off the red light camera, and just in case I've failed to fix my bent and folded under my fender license plate from the time I hit a tree last summer lol.
in VA they are passing legistlation to legally allow riders to run red lights if they have been sitting at them for a certain amount of time and the lights do not change. http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/04/bikes-motorcycles-can-soon-bypass-va-red-lights
Osterkraut wrote: #5... They're magnetic, not weight. Right? One of the worst "lists" I've seen on Cracked.
TN passed a law were you can basically run the light on a bike. I think officially you are supposed to sit through one or two cycles, then go if it doesn't change. It really depends on the system. I have some intersections where it never changes for me and others where the bike does trigger it.
Other states have done the same.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-10-red-light-laws_N.htm
From the USAToday article.
"North Carolina passed a similar law in 2007. Wisconsin (2006), Idaho (2006) Arkansas (2005), Tennessee (2003) and Minnesota (2002)"
Looks like it's been kosher in MN for a while now. I knew it was OK, just didn't know since when. I was also surprised it was so few states, I thought the # was much higher. Though the CA requirement that they detect bikes should theoretically solve the same problem. So states with that sort of thing are still at least trying to solve the problem.
You can add MO to that list.
2.0dohc wrote: You can add MO to that list.
Yeah. The article was actually a bit old. It did mention MO in the next sentence as one with legislation in progress.
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