Originally Posted by
ChicagoNative
LOL the entire City of Chicago is set up incorrectly then. No, if the sensors were that sensitive, motorcycles would trip them more regularly, plus bicycles would trip the red-light cameras and get the flashy lights behind them when I see them sail through without even slowing down. But heck, with no license plates or identifying marks on bicycles to track them to an owner, what do bikes even care of a picture is taken from a red light camera?
Not sure about Chicago, but the red light cameras around here aren't tied to the inductive loops used for traffic signals, they trip optically.
But it's quite true the inductive signal loops can be adjusted to reliably detect bicycles. Had a long back-and-forth with King County, WA transportation engineers on that -- they started out saying it was impractical, and ended up changing county policy to make it standard procedure to adjust signals to detect bicycles, and to mark the "sweet spot" of the inductive loops.
Not too long after that, Washington State actually passed a law mandating bicycle detection at demand-actuated signals state-wide. (Starting with new construction and regular maintenance, so don't expect all the signals to work properly any time soon....)