Green light!

[jwax]

Oh damn! Now it is a federal offense to trip a red light to green via infrared!
dacflyer- take note!
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0, ... tw=rss.TOP

[philba]

I'm not sure it matters much - this is illegal in every state anyway. I do dislike the feds getting involved in basically local matters. The place where the feds should be looking is at people selling these things interstate.<p>On the subject of it being illegal - I for one am glad. The last thing I want is some guy messing with a traffic light. Yeah, its a cool fantasy but the reality is that it poses a serious public hazard. Its one thing if it only affects one person (like a radar detector) but definitely bad when it affects literally hundreds of people. These are usually only at busy intersections so it would really screw up traffic flow.<p>One final nano-rant. why did the people that designed the MIRT and its receiver not put some sort of code in it. For god sakes, $20 garage door openers have more security than these things. Really really incredibly really stupid stupid stupid.

[Newz2000]

Don't you think the subject line should be:
!Green Light

[Dave Dixon]

If I were developing this system for public works. I would make it turn all of the lights red. This would stop all of the traffic in the intersection, allowing the emergency vehicle to go through, but not the hacker. This wouldn't work for the public transportation thing mentioned though.
Dave

[dacflyer]

well here in NC we do not use any pre-emption like this..only the firehouse uses it in some locations when exiting the building to goto a call.
and the other is of course the rail road..other than that,, thats it..i do know that other states use traffic pre-emption..
but not here,, the emergency here just blair sirens and blow really huge air horns to plow thru intersections..

[jollyrgr]

Dave Dixon has the right answer. Instead of replacing all the encoders and decoders, simply reprogram the software in the traffic control systems to go all red. As far as rouge MIRTs, I have been in intersections where these have been used on a number of occasions. Not a huge number, but enough to be angered by their use. (You can see the white light on top of the signal arm start flashing when a MIRT is in use. When you see it activated but see no emergency vehicles it is quite easy to understand what happened.)<p>I probably shouldn't go into details but do know of another issue that is similar to this one. The old style civil defense sirens used an RF link to control their action. The coding was so simple it was pathetic. The sad part about it was how EASILY the "secret" could be stumbled across by accident. The newer systems are much more secure and some even use a multi-step process to trigger the siren.

[thesprocket]

The All red method would prevent the emergency traffic if the roadway was divided and the emergency vehicle could not get to the supposedly empty on coming lane. <p>What if the system gets hacked by collison shop owners, and they get it to go all Green? Anachry!

[Mike]

Exactly what I was thinking. One person going on the north-south road hits it, and a guy going east-west hits it as well. Does that mean green in all directions?

[gerty]

Mike , I used to work on the traffic lights in my town years ago. The controller has/had what was called a "conflict monitor". What that did was look at the colors for the different directions. Any time you had the same color for both direction the controller would get knocked offline and a mechanical 4 way flasher (yellow) would take over. Usually cycling the power took care of the problem.

[mnboy]

I am on the local Fire Department (all volunteer) but our town is so small there isn't a single traffic light, however it nearby larger towns they use the all red method, at least I have seen it first had for ambulances. All the lights go red, and the ambulance moves into the "wrong lane" to get through the intersection.