red light hell

has anyone else been in this situation?

you are driving home late fri. or sat. night from a good run with your friends. its about 12 or 1 am and not that many cars around. you come to a red light and notice that 2 minutes have gone by and still no green. you start to grow impatient and flash your highbeams a couple of times to see if the sensor picks up your small bike.  3 more minutes go by and you have seen the light change for the other lanes except the direction you are going. after moving back and forth trying desperately to make your bike noticable you finally decide to screw it and give the light the finger and make an illegal change either to the left or worst run the red light.  this happens to me all the time and i know that if i ever have the bad luck of getting pulled over, they just wont understand....  

Depending on your city/municipality, you might be okay if you've wanted through several light changes and still cannot get the traffic actuated signal to go green for you.

These sensors are actually magnetic inductance- they trigger when a large metallic object (a cage) breaks the electrical field. Your highbeams, weight, etc. has nothing to do with it. Many of these aren't calibrated to be sensitive enough to detect a motorcycle.

If in doubt, make three rights.  

Happens to me all the time, I usually go through. Most bikes are pretty much 100% aluminum so the magnetic sensors don't pick them up. My wife just told me that on her commute there's one light with a special marked lane for bikes that works for her. Sometimes I pull up extra far and wait for a cage to pull in behind me.  

It's certainly an interesting predicament. And one I think we've all experienced (or will). I've read that the sensors are built to be able to recognize everything from motorcycles to cars, though often the new lightweight sportbikes don't to the trick.

Hence the invention of things like the Green Light Trigger. They supposedly work well on the stingy sensors, and there is more than one brand out there. I've even seen a few on ebay.

One thing I've heard from an officer, though: Because the sensors are meant to be able to triggered by even a small motorcycle, if the light doesn't change for a very long time and it's clear you're not able to trigger it, you can run the light only if and when it is safe to do so because the trigger may be faulty.

What's the "safe" time to run it? I'd imagine, as in your example, when it's 2am and there's no one coming toward you in any direction for as far as the eye can see.

How long to wait? I don't know. There may not be a definitive guideline.

And I can not and will not accept any responsibility for someone reading this and getting a ticket for running a red light. This was simply an unofficial conversation with an officer outside a coffee shop.  

I have had that happen here in Denver many of times on this light as i drive to Starbucks late at night (24hr starbucks) and it wont change due to the low traffic.. And im normally in my jeep... And it still wont change for the turn lane.  So i have ran it many of times.  

you might want to look at the specific law of running red lights in your state. in az it's not in driver license books but the law does state that if you are at red light and are completely stopped and the light does not change you can proceed with caution but there can be no oncoming traffic at all.