Never Wait Again

NEVER WAIT AGAIN

How to trip traffic signals with a motorcycle.

Ever been stuck at a traffic signal, waiting for the light to change, and wished your motorcycle could trip the signal light switches? It's not as hard as you think.

First, the weight of a car or motorcycle is not what trips the signal lights. Oh, there are a few weight sensitive signals around, but they are rare. Almost all signals are now triggered electronically by an inductive pickup.

The secret is to put your motorcycle as close as possible to the pickup wires, which are embedded in the pavement. Because the people who designed signals thought more about cars than motorcycles, they have designed the sensing

wires to be receptive to cars. The wires are usually laid out in a square or rectangle just behind the stop line or crosswalk. Separate lefthand turn lanes have their own pickup w ires, also laid out in a square or rectangle.

Most of the time the wires are installed in the pavement after the pavement is laid. Workers cut small grooves in the pavement, the wires are buried and then the lines are sealed with some sort of tarlike substance. You can see the marks left by the lines at most city intersections.

Now all you have to do is make sure your motorcycle is parked right over the lines w henever you stop at a signal.

Sometimes the lines are set farther behind the intersection than you usually stop. Don't go beyond them unless a car comes up behind you, in which case the car can trip the signal more easily.

It's also possible that one part of a pickup might be more sensitive than another part. Usually the left edge of the lefthand turn lane pickup can be made more sensitive because there are no passing cars in an adjacent lane.

There are inductive pickups that motorcycles can't trip. They can be adjusted. A call, or better yet a polite visit, to the city traffic department can often get the signal adjusted so your bike will trip it.

This is important if you go through the same intersection every day and have trouble with the signal.

If an adjustment can't be made, you can’t find an alternate way around the intersection and you don’t want to just run the signal, you can also try mounting some kind of metal, preferrably a pipe, under the engine, as close to the pavement as you dare. This is not what you'd call an elegant solution to the problem. It might work, though.

Now when you see motorcyclists making a point of riding over the pavement cracks, don’t think they're playing an updated version of a child's game. IS