> This may be a great obscure fact, but it is not an example of European regulations gone mad. To keep track of where all the trains are on the Swiss rail network, there are detectors positioned around the rails. They are simple detectors that are activated when a wheel goes over a rail, and they count how many wheels there are to provide some basic information about the train which has just passed. Unfortunately, they keep track of the number of wheels using an 8-digit binary number, and when that number reaches 11111111 it rolls over to 00000000. Any trains which bring the count back to exactly zero move around undetected, as phantom trains.
From: "Humble Pi: A comedy of maths errors" by Matt Parker (https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/books/products/humble-pi...), page 191.
edit: Added quote attribution.