I have bloged about the traffic lights over here in the past.
Its been about 6 months now that I have been commuting from the house and that’s long enough for me to come to see a new thing about America………
But first, lets recap the old commute…. It was along a very major road. Rancho California Road is 3 lanes both ways for many a mile. Its nearly always busy and the lights have to be set up to help the flow of traffic. There is not much to be all that excited about, you just grind your way down the road and back, some times you got a pretty good green run, one time I got a green all the way, sometimes you get reds. You just have to deal with it.
The new commute is rather different. The roads are small, more urban, and it has been long enough now that I have come to understand something in the last week or so (hey, we all know I am a slow learner!)…. When your on a bike you read the lights a bit more than most. Lane splitting (riding between the lanes of stopped or slow moving traffic) is legal here in California, and even though the Goldwing is about as fat as a beached baby whale, I still lane split where I can.
Unlike many bikies here, if the lights are going to change when I am half way down, I wont even start and thus save the whole slipping into a moving flow of traffic….. so, I watch the lights even more than most.
Here then is the new observation…… The vehicle sensors for the traffic lights in the road over here really do work!! Not only do they work, but the programming of the lights respond to triggering them….. They are so responsive and flexible that I have come to the point where you really cant memorize the light sequence. Mostly because there is no sequence, they are driven by the traffic flow!!!
Its both frustrating and cool all in the same commute.
I cant really predict if the lights are going to change, but I am getting better at reading what the lights might be reading…. I look and see who has driven over what sensor when, that gives me a feel for what might change when.
They are also sensitive enough to pick up the Goldwing. This is something new for me, the old bike in Australia never tripped them.
The first sensor is good distance back from the lights too, so its not all that uncommon for me to ride gently up to a red light in the mornings and have it change before I get there. The best is turning lanes, it will stop the on coming traffic and let me around with out stopping. Not ALL the time granted, but more often than not.
Anyway, its just another differnce that I have noticed between here and there.