Max,
A bit of advice - the only way to get quicker with the clutch
and more acquainted with the bike is to ride it. A few hours on a back
road will get you invaluable experience in how the bike handles.
You'll also find that engine temperature will affect the clutch
grabbing - as will the type of oil you use. (I'm not trying to turn
this into an Oil Thread - do a search through the archives for
numerous opinions on that subject)
Ride Safe!
-Joey
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Max <[email protected]> wrote:
> When I was in my motorcycle safety class, our instructor did inform us
> that North Carolina has a similar provision; you may proceed if your
> bike does not trip the light. While this information is very handy,
> as I'm learning to ride and am not always quick on the clutch, I've
> been in situations where it's simply not safe for me to run the light;
> busy, busy intersections. I really appreciate all your thoughts on
> how to handle these kinds of situations because this has been
> happening to me quite a bit these days.
>
> -Max
>
> On May 10, 1:55 pm, Noah Goodall <[email protected]> wrote:
>> There's federal guidance for how to set up a traffic light's timing
>> plan. This is a good start:http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop08024/
>>
>> However, different jurisdictions have different techniques. The most
>> common way I've seen in the field is to use commercial software, where
>> you enter in the the lane configuration, traffic volumes, and vehicle
>> turning movement counts, and it spits out a pretty good timing plan.
>> This one is by far the most user-friendly and
>> popular:http://www.trafficware.com/synchro.html
>>
>> The reason you get such poor performance at many places is because
>> timing plans aren't maintained. A good traffic engineer goes out and
>> counts vehicle volumes and turning movements at the intersection for a
>> few hours every couple years and revise the timing plan. Many
>> departments don't have the budget for this, and the timing plan is
>> quickly outdated. Also, you're supposed to have different timing plans
>> based on the volume you're seeing, so you'd have different timing
>> plans for a afternoon rush hour than you would for 2AM on a Tuesday.
>> But again, that takes more time and is not always done.
>>
>> Areas with a lot of congestion have much more sophisticated solutions.
>> There's a few products out that use video detection to constantly
>> measure vehicle volumes, and can therefore continuously update the
>> timing plan. The goal is to idiot-proof the whole thing, and it seems
>> to be working. We're doing a before-after analysis of this
>> one:http://rhythmtraffic.com/index.php/insync/
>>
>> I'll let you know when we publish the results.
>>
>> -Noah
>>
>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 5:39 PM, zgotts <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > Noah, any chance you have knowledge of light timing?
>>
>> > I'm no expert on this, and I'm sure there's a lot of complexities to
>> > it, but I mean.. are there not standards for this stuff? Does every
>> > town just have their own system that they just pull out of a hat?
>>
>> > --
>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> > "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group.
>> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> > [email protected].
>> > For more options, visit this group
>> > athttp://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group.
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> [email protected].
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers?hl=en.
>
>
--
-Joey Kelley
JoeyKelley.com - My Life Online
JoeyFixesComputers.com - Its What I Do!
JoeyKelleyPhoto.com - Photographing Today, For Tomorrow
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers?hl=en.
