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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

Here in Groningen (the Netherlands) I'd say 90% of people wait at a traffic light. Thing is, here cycling isn't something done by risk-takers. We have 80 year-olds cycling to the grocery store. That leads to a whole different group mentality than looking at those willing to cycle in NYC. Heck, I'd be hesitant to cycle in NYC.

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Another difference (most likely) is that it's quite common for US traffic lights to switch only when they detect traffic on one of the roads, and this rarely works with bicycles.

Nothing like sitting at a red for 2 minutes before realizing you have to either run it or go on the sidewalk.

Maybe not so common on the East Coast, but 4-way stops are another can of worms here. Most drivers expect you'll ignore the stop sign and will yield for you. Some will refuse to go even after you're at a complete stop and got there after them, at which point it's a standoff. Doing a rolling stop (Idaho stop - illegal most places) ends up being the safest option most of the time.

In my state, there's a "dead red" exception, where a cyclist can pass through a red light under certain conditions.

Usually you can trigger the electromagnetic sensor if you ride over the edge of it; there's usually a visible seam in the pavement. You want to ride along the edge of the loop.

I’ve never seen a detector like that. All the ones I’ve seen are mounted next to the traffic light and aim down towards where a car would be waiting.

They're very common where I live, but to the best of my knowledge they're weight-based so I'm not sure a cyclist would trigger it.

Usually it's a loop of wire embedded in the pavement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop#Vehicle_detecti...

When I rode a moped I would never trigger these things till I started rolling around with a large magnet zip tied to the bottom of my ride.

Hereabouts (Western WA), some cities have actually started painting the location of the sensor, specifically for cyclists. Here's an intersection in Redmond where you can see those.

https://goo.gl/maps/TRmyGzWZDAQ2

Around certain cities in the LA area, the striping crew paints a stencil of a cyclist and an arrow pointing forward over the sensor.

Good hack, but you shouldn't have to know how the hardware works to use the product safely. Good infrastructure/urban design should work without people having to think about it.

Around here there's a little white T-shaped line painted where you should roll your bicycle to trigger the light.

Good to know, thanks! What gets me is that a lot of the automatic lights are of a different variety that works fine, and in some cases there's a bike lane up to a light that is incapable of detecting you (without switching lanes, at least).

That does work most of the time, but I've found that once they pave over it with more asphalt, it becomes difficult to tell where the edge once was.

I have found that traffic lights with camera based detectors work pretty well in terms of detecting cyclists (without the paving over problem that loop detectors have).

In the netherlands, bike lanes have buttons at the traffic lights much like the pedestrian buttons. We also have sensors and you can see if they worked with lights in the button.

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