What should I do with stop lights which don't detect my bike? [Ontario]

Question

I'm wondering what the law in Ontario allows me to do here if I want to turn left, what I typically do is use the pedestrian crossing and get back on my bike once I am across. I saw this question, but it related to the US and lights with a specific bike detector.

Answer 1

These situations are frustrating. This site (Ontario bike laws) explicitly states the "Idaho stop" (Cyclists must stop on a red light, but can then proceed yielding to all traffic) is illegal. This leaves you few options other than to dismount and use the pedestrian crossing. If you know the phasing will go green as it cycles though after a pedestrian button is pressed, you could then remount and wait for the green light.

Of course the non-legal way may be more pragmatic if traffic is very quite and it is safe to continue though the intersection. A defense that the lights were failing to work correctly by not sensing a bicycle may work, provided you were stopped for a period of time and could prove it. Long term, you could lobby the local authorities (with the support of a local bicycle group) to have the light controls upgraded to sense cyclists, or introduce the Idaho stop law.

For US based readers, I found this site with a map of states and their bicycle stop laws (note: Quite old, 2014 - check for updates for specific states.)

Answer 2

Please consider contacting the municipality and asking them to tune the specific loop so that bikes can activate it. You may find your muni receptive to such requests; where I live in Vancouver area I have had success getting loops fixed.

This is far and away the best longer term solution to your issue.

Answer 3

The first thing to do, is to look for the wires in the road. Frequently you'll see a loop of tar snakes where the first car in the queue is expected to stop. Make sure that you are bang in the middle of that loop.

Secondly, slant your bike. You are trying to interact inductively with a vertical magnetic field, and an upright bike has very little cross section in the vertical direction. However, once you slant your bike, your metal wheels will gain significant amounts of cross section. If your frame is a diamond frame, that too will gain useful cross section.

Done right, this should solve the vast majority of cases for you. I only remember a single case where this method did not work. A 45° angle of your bike is generally sufficient. If you can't see any tar snakes (because the wire loop was laid down during the construction of the road), you may need to experiment with the location of your bike. Try both the center region of a stopped car and the place where a stopped car's engine comes to rest. Those are the most common places for those induction loops. Take a look at lights with tar snakes to get an idea of where to expect them.

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Of course, sometimes you come across a light that fails to detect you at all. And, if you don't have any metal in your rims and your frame is carbon, you are out of luck. You need to have some kind of metal loop to activate those lights. In these cases, I refer you to mattnz's answer.

Answer 4

I can only answer with regard to what a rider can practically do, not the law (shouldn't law.stackexchange.com be more useful for that?).

Traffic lights typically detect vehicles through inductive loops in the road. These may be rectangular, diamond, or circular. They detect best when the frame of the bike is directly over the wire - not, as most people assume, when it is central in the shape. The rectangular loops are most convenient as it is natural to stop your bike off center, putting it over the wire. For other shapes, it's not so good (but you only care if there is no other traffic which would trigger the lights for you).

There are also lights which use cameras/microwaves to detect vehicles - look for a small camera on top of the lights or on the horizontal pole supporting the lights. But these are usually used for temporary lights.

In principle, there are also magnetic vehicle detection systems, which see the change in the Earth's magnetic field when a vehicle is near. However, these are not popular as the Earth's magnetic field is horizontal at the equator, so near the equator these detectors are useless.

Answer 5

By far the best you can do in various cities and towns in Ontario is to push the button. I cannot prove it, but I have extensive empirical evidence that the algorithms used give far higher priority for a signal to turn green if someone pushed the button.

Perhaps because they don't change the code from summer to winter, and leaving pedestrians waiting in January is merciless (freezing digits, etc), whereas car drivers are in a cosily warm place.

Ethically, it's perfectly all right, of course, since cyclists are exposed to "the elements" just as much as pedestrians (if not more in winter due to the increased wind chill).

In short, scoot over to the button and push it. The bonus is that the cars will acknowledge the reduced waiting time, some drivers will approvingly show an expression of contentment, and they will be even more considerate than they would have been, as you subsequently take off.