cameras on top of traffic lights

[bad boy]

anyone know if them cameras on top of traffic lights can catch you jumping red lights?

[CarZee]

ISTR They're not cameras at all.

They detect a low frequency (7Hz?) strobe light that emergency vehicles can emit to override traffic lights in their favour...

[richard36]

what sort of thing are they? if they look like scaled down gatso, then yes, and thats what they do, i saw a lot of them in Cornwall recently, but in Northampton, they are a kind of motion detector
(or at least i hope so)

[Ballistic Banana]

thought they were sensors/or they are around my way.

We have Gatsos?truvelo at lights near me that do speeding and jumping apparently,as a friend at work broke down once as he was going over the lights and it wouldnt start.
Got out opened the bonnet and every now and then there was an allmighty flash was untill it hads done it a few times that he relised that it was the camera.

Now i dont know wheather thats the truth or not.

BB

[Ballistic Banana]

quote:
that emergency vehicles can emit to override traffic lights in their favour...

And where can one acquire one of these handy little things from that emits whatever.
I think u might be pulling somethin as the ones i see allways seem to go over reds especially.

BB

[CarZee]

quote:i saw a lot of them in Cornwall recently

mounted on top of traffic light poles, or merely adjacent to???

Edit: Hey BB, I may well be wrong, but I'm sure they're not speed/red light cameras mounted on top of traffic light poles.

>> Edited by CarZee on Wednesday 25th September 19:09

[rich 36]

can i get an override thingy too pleaseeeeeeeee

[Nevin]

They are traffic sensors for quiet times. If you roll up to the lights and they are red, and it detects no traffic coming from other directions, it will chnage your light to green then rather than running through the sequence.

[plotloss]

Go on then, where do you get one of these low frequency strobes? Can you just get a mini strobe and modify its innards?

Matt.

[pdv6]

quote:
They are traffic sensors for quiet times. If you roll up to the lights and they are red, and it detects no traffic coming from other directions, it will chnage your light to green then rather than running through the sequence.

That's my understanding of them too.
Think the override thingy consists of a flashing blue light and a nee-naw sound!

{edited to add:} There's plenty of traffic light cameras in Bristol, but they all look like 'ordinary' Gatsos, just a little narrower.

>> Edited by pdv6 on Wednesday 25th September 20:49

[CarZee]

I'd go and find out where I read about the strobe light thing.. but I cannae be arsed - someone else do it have a look on the speed camera sites or something...

Might have been experimental... or even abroad , but it's not a figment of my imagination.

I expect MadCop & colleagues could give a more knowledgeable answer..

[x777cat]

quote:
ISTR They're not cameras at all.

They detect a low frequency (7Hz?) strobe light that emergency vehicles can emit to override traffic lights in their favour...

Not true.

They are radar units - cant remember exact freq and power but they are short range - this is why your speed detectors go off at a lot of ATS's.

They detect large objects and the control unit then decides to either change the lights or not.

Its called dynamic phasing.