Originally Posted by
rodar y rodar
For my personal situation, it doesn`t really make much difference- my commute doesn`t involve any traffic lights and in my day-time wanderings through busier areas the lights are all on timers. But I`m curious about these ideas concerning stationing yourself directly on top of the sensor and rolling right up the middle of it and figure-eight coils, etc. How the hell are you supposed to know what kind of sensor it is or even WHERE it is? A major street usually has lanes what, 12 ft wide? Something like that, anyway. Ain`t no way I`m fat enough to even cover a quartert of that width. And how far back from the line? Again, most bicycles are less than half the length of a Corolla. If you don`t know where the sensors are, you`d need to wait five minutes, move over, wait five minutes again, move... No thanks- I`ll just run the light.
Unless the road has been repaved since installation of the loop, the location of the wires is pretty clear. The wires are installed in the ground after the pavement has been cut and the cuts filled with tar. Most of the figure 8 ones look like this
Position your bike right over the middle of the loop. If the loop has been recovered due to an overlay job, then finding the coil is nearly impossible. Those are the ones I usually can't trip.
Once you learn the trick to tripping the light, you can amaze your friends on those high speed highway crossings!