The word of the day is: Traffic

Two traffic related stories from Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things.

Boing Boing: Video of a congested street in India:
A ballet of traffic in an Indian city, an intersection where even if there are signal lights, no one actually pays attention to them anyway. Watch the torrent of cars, buses, scooters and pedestrians all in fluid movement without killing each other, with zen-like precision.




YouTube link

Boing Boing: Man fined $50 for using device to change traffic signals:

A man from Longmont, Colorado was fined $50 when the cops caught him using a gizmo that supposedly changes traffic lights from red to green. he says he paid $100 on eBay for it. He had been using it for two years, and says the thing 'paid for itself' by saving him time spent waiting for signal lights to change.

The device, called an Opticon, is similar to what firefighters use to change lights when they respond to emergencies. It emits an infrared pulse that receivers on the traffic lights pick up.

Niccum was cited after city traffic engineers who noticed repeated traffic light disruptions at certain intersections spotted a white Ford pickup passing by whenever the patterns were disrupted.

(Buy your own "traffic control preemptive device" here for just $299.99.) Link