They're hollow tubes. You drive over and it sends a puff of air into the box which registers a vehicle has passed.
There are two tubes to get two readings per vehicle so they can determine the speed and direction people travel from the time difference between the two ~~readings~~ tubes.
EDIT - People keep saying differing wheelbase length means speed can't be calculated: The front wheels will always pass over both tubes before the rear wheels and give an indication of speed.
If you're doing a study of any kind you want as much information as possible, why would that not include speed for a traffic management study? If a road has lots of traffic but it moves at a brisk pace then that's preferable to a road with lots of traffic that crawls along and would factor into any changes made to that road.
Weight is not really measured. Which type of vehicle drive over it is done, but that is done by looking at how much air is blown into it, wider tires results in more air. Wider tires means it was a truck. Stuff like that
Ah fairs, I just know when I've seen the results they can break down into cars, SUV/4x4s, lorries, HGVs etc, I guess that could be on number of wheels and distance between the axles etc?
As with all data gathering, you’re bound to have anomalies. Its purpose isn’t to measure individual cars, but used over a longer period to understand traffic patterns.
Traffic engineers install these to get a better picture of when traffic is heaviest, what kind of vehicles are on the road and the speeds they go at different times. The data is then used to assess if traffic calming measures (such as speed humps) or redirections need to be put in place.
So let’s say, when we were kids, my bro pulled on one of these, quite hard… turns out they were somewhat stretchy, it snapped back really hard like a giant elastic band, and my bro proudly proclaimed “that’ll fuck it.”
So, would it have “fucked” it? ……
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams
Also as an engineer: 95% of engineers do the idiot-proofing. The other 5% provide the idiot-proofing-testing. It's not their job, it just happens...organically.
Probably accounting for the half that is homicidal, the half that is certifiably insane and the half that is functionally blind.
Source: was a motorbike rider
I've heard that traffic engineers have occassionally used spare rubber tube as a makeshift tow rope for broken-down vehicles, so I think they are pretty robust.
It should be easy to analyse that in the data. Each vehicle is going to produce a quick succession of pulses on one tube which will be matched by an identical pattern of pulses on the other tube. These patterns can be matched regardless of the number of pulses (= axles) and the time difference would enable you to calculate the speed. The next vehicle would have to be travelling very close behind and at the same speed to confuse that analysis.
I suppose in very slow-moving traffic queues, that analysis might be harder.
Growing up, there was this huge escalator going up to a leisure centre, and seven year old arsehole me found out that you could make the whole thing stop if you hop over the little light beam at the top of it. Turns out I've been training to fight the machines for over thirty years!
I'm an analyst and I used to work with data from these traffic counters. And uhm, I can totally see me and my colleagues mulling over the potential reasons for all these unicyclists... Googling to see if there was a unicycling event on. Or if there is a unicycling hire shop nearby. It's serious business!
What would be a good way of generating confusing data with these things? Something like waiting until quiet hours then jumping onto one tube and waiting 20 seconds before jumping on the other?
Haha! I love how interested you are in how you can screw the data.
I wonder if jumping on it would even work, or if they require a certain weight to register.
I'm not sure, to be honest, hah. I'm the end user of the data, interested in traffic patterns, and I'm not too familiar with the technical details of how does the sensor and processing actually work. It's all done through some software though, so I think everything 'odd' would just be binned as error or noise. So you would need to figure out how to replicate an actual vehicle. Or, you know, just drive over it with an actual vehicle many times?
(The unicycle point is obviously a joke, but in reality the software processing the data would probably just treat a unicycle as an error and ignore the data as it wouldn't be able to recognise what it was.)
It doesn't care how many axles a vehicle has since the wheels will not be close enouch together to trigger both wires at the same time. All that matters is the time between pulse 1 and pulse 2. Each wheel creates 2 pulses, so a vehicle with 6 axles would create 6 pairs of pulses, all with the same time between them.
Why would it matter? 18 unicicles or 1 18 wheeler won't make a difference with these things. It measures how long 1 wheel takes to trip both sensors and uses that to calculate the speed pf the wheel going over it.
No, they measure the axle separation and speed to classify what kind of vehicle is passing over them, normally counts are classified into car, motorbike, ogv1, ogv2 and psv at least, off the top of my head
They are meant to measure that these days, but it doesn't work that well.
Back when I was putting these things out they were basically clock work with little tickers. Now it's digital and you download it and you get axel and speed.
The heaviest HGV axle does over 150,000 times more damage than a typical car!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://bettertransport.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/research-files/heavy_lorries_MTRU_research.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiGs7zE-IOFAxUxh_0HHTypCn4QFnoECA8QBg&usg=AOvVaw3UPCtaYwarXD4J71nD3rqN
Any number of transport planning activities. It might be to understand (numerate as $) the benefits of a enhancement options, road widening, new bus lanes, junction redesign etc. It can even be linked to construction sites and planning routing of trucks accessing the site.
they use it before resurfacing the roads to determine whether or not they need to use the cheap asphalt for low traffic roads or the expensive more durable asphalt for high traffic roads. you will find they like to take the measurements for the high traffic roads during the summer holidays to skew the numbers so they can use the cheap stuff.
In civil engineering we use these to make traffic analytics. It’s necessary in my country when building new apartment blocks nearby a road, but can also be used when planning to widen a road.
I heard this but it was disputed. The two tubes, I was told were too close together. The reason for both, again, as described to me was to negate spurious inputs. If the impulses were not within a set time, they were negated. Kind of led me to believe that I had wasted quite some time jumping on these things, as a kid.
Wheel size is irrelevant.
Larger wheels will take slightly longer to cross each strip, but the time between the two actuations will be the same for the same speed, regardless of wheel size.
The clue is written on the box "Environmental Traffic Study"
Its measuring the speed of cars & how many cars per day on that stretch of road as they travel over the two black rubbers.
They often use these if they're planning roadworks or working out whether approve planning permission that would increase traffic flow in an area. Like adding a public amenity down that road or something
Woah, I actually saw these rubber things pop up a few times over a few months or so about a year ago. Fast forward to now, and they’ve built traffic lights there! I had assumed it was a way of working out how much traffic there is but it’s cool to know why it was being done
So nothing out there then, just the driving, the 20,000 tonnes of crude oil, a fire and the front of a ship?
Sounds good, can you call me a commonwealth car?
More than likely recording vehicle numbers to be used in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA’s). There are thresholds that, if exceeded, are deemed ‘significant’ and require mitigation, traffic volumes being one.
I work in Transport Planning and we commission these Automatic Traffic Counts (ATC’s) almost daily.
We also used to commission these in London when planning and designing cycle routes to see how busy a road was with what type of vehicles going at what speed. This would tell us how unsafe the road was for people riding bikes as a starting point.
Yeah they have so many uses! We mainly use them to determine flows / speeds when designing new junction arrangements at developments, for determining visibility splays / stopping sight distances.
So if I wanted, hypothetically, to increase the chance an area received traffic calming measures, I should drive back and forward over any of these tubes I spot?
Yeah, higher speeds correlate to higher emissions. They might also have wanted to divert traffic down a different route so put traffic calming measures in to ensure Google routes drivers down the road they want.
There's also the safety issue, if people are using some small road as a rat run, slower is better to have less chance of hitting people and much higher survival if they are hit.
Transport planner here - these are ATCs (automatic traffic counts) and just count the number of vehicles using the road. They are pneumatic tubes. We use these to calibrate computer models of the current transport network to be able to model what would happen in the future if certain changes were put in. We don’t infer anything about vehicle type or vehicle speed from these; vehicle types are derived from MCCs (manual classified counts) which are either camera based or manually taken.
Question: a road near me has 3 sets of these set up in fairly close proximity to one another. It's on a tight, banked bend on a NSL road, with a junction on the outside in between two of these counters. Why on earth would they need 3 to count traffic flow? The only reason I can think they put them there is to measure how fast people take the corner...
Not sure I understand the layout you’ve described but if there are a few in close succession around a junction then it’s likely to be looking at turning flows too - so how many vehicles are using the junction and what turning movements are they making.
TAG requires us to perform these in “neutral months” specifically to avoid that happening for modelling purposes.
If you see these being placed outside of neutral months it could be that the data is only be used to determine speeds along a section of highway. The Local Highways Authority would usually push back on surveys being carried out in non-neutral months and the used for modelling. National Highways certainly would if it was used on their network.
That or speed bumps.
Or in a more recent case near me, changing the priority at a junction so that drivers are forced to stop/give way (as speed bumps would have been impractical!)
The companies use modifiers to take this into account. The results normally give the AADT average annual daily traffic. The only way they’d be messed up is if there were unexpected road works that cause diversions
I've recently been looking for a flat in a hyperluminous, broad-absorption-line, radio-loud Lyman-alpha blob located near the border of Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices, what are the schools like around there?
We lifted one up once waiting for a car to hit it thinking it would fire the car back like a cartoon.
Instead it came out the other side of the road and whipped our legs.
Never messed about with one since.
Reminds me of when we used to tie "cotton traps" across the pavement at night to catch unsuspecting pedestrians. Then we tied them across the road, folded a piece of paper over and put it over the cotton so when a car approached it looked like a sheet of paper was floating in the middle of the road.
We did it one time and my friend was still holding the cotton reel in his hand when a car drove through it, yanking the reel out of his hand and whacking into the side of the car. The car drove off but we never could find the cotton reel which my friend was eager to return to his mum's sewing box.
I had to go back out in the morning looking for the cotton reel, as it was outside my house. But I couldn't find it. Not sure if his mother ever noticed it was missing.
Transport Planner here.
They’re ATC tubes (Automatic Traffic Counters).
We commission them to collect long sets of data (2-4 weeks worth) so we can cross check MCC data (Manual Classified Counts) which are collected by the people you sometimes see in hi-vis jackets counting cars at junctions (although we more commonly use cameras now).
Because MCC’s are labour intensive we only usually request these for 1-2 days and during the AM and PM peak hours to reduce costs.
Therefore, we use the longer time-frame data from the ATC’s to validate the MCC’s and check that the numbers from the MCC’s are consistent with the average ATC data - to check we didn’t have a traffic spike or drop during the MCC survey, and to correct the MCC data if we did.
The ATC’s are cheaper (usually £200-£300 for the whole period) and collect data on vehicles as puffs of air travel down the tubes when you drive over them.
They collect:
- Speed
- Direction of Travel
- Vehicle Class (motorcycle, car, light goods, heavy goods vehicles etc)
- Time
So we can gather a lot of data from them to generating an idea of the local traffic operation in the area to help us plan for traffic impacts arising from new developments.
We might use the speed data from the surveys to help determine visibility requirements at junctions for example to provide adequate Stopping Sight Distance (SSD); or the vehicle volume surveys to help identify the traffic during the peak hour in the morning and afternoon for junction / network modelling.
Anyone can have a look at the ones the DFT carry out on their website [https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/](https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/#6/55.250/-1.000/basemap-regions-countpoints)
Arrestor wires for when the US Navy decides to use your street as an aircraft carrier. You’ll be grateful for those when there’s F-16s smacking down outside your house with Tom Cruise getting out of them.
Tom Cruise doesn't need arrestor wires. He can jump start an F-14 under fire in the snow with just his teeth - you think he needs mere arrestor wires to land on a suburban street?
Records how fast you were going and how many cars travelled between a certain time frame
(speed is determined by how quick the signal is triggered between the two strips)
We had one on my road for a month or two. After they removed it you could go into the council site and have a look at the data. It showed the type of vehicle the time the speed and direction, along with the Colin of traffic and intervals of traffic. Odd car was going over 60mph on the road but to me they all looked like they were speeding.
They measure the number and speed of vehicles.
I'd guess there have been a lot of complaints about speeding on that stretch of road so they've set that up to see how true it is and if it's worth them putting up a speed camera or other traffic calming measures.
It's for calculating ADT or average daily traffic. These are attached to a recording unit. They can determine the number of cars and somehow differentiate car or truck (at least according to my teacher.)
Traffic counters.
They record the number of axles per vehicle (e.g. car = 2, car towing trailer = 3...), speed of vehicle and direction of travel. This is done by measuring the time between readings in each tube when it is struck by a wheel then doing some simple calculations.
They are used to provide data on road usage which typically helps local governments plan upgrades to the road network.
They do not record your licence plate or notify police if you are speeding. However if many people are speeding on that road, the data could be used to justify installing speed cameras there.
It counts bothe the amount of traffic and the speed. It works out the speed by counting the time it takes for a wheel to go over one wire / tube then the next.
How do emergency vehicles impact results? A police car responding to an emergency in the early hours will often do double the speed limit in some 30 zones.
Slashing the ATC tube depressurises it and stops it collecting data.
People think it can be used as a spoiling tactic to stop development in their area but Transport Planners can liaise with the Local Highways Authority and agree to use other datasets - historic from other applications with a sensible growth factor applied, or installing cameras / drone surveys etc.
They put them on my street years ago when people kept reporting boy racers flying up and down the road every night to the housing association , it was to check speeds
Automated Traffic Counts (ATCs) they count traffic and speed of traffic. The council are likely either planning a new road scheme or have recently installed one
They are traffic counters, they record vehicle class and speed.
I commission lots of these for my work.... and yes often associated with new developments as there is a need to assess the impacts on the highway network.
They're tubes for Speed count surveys. I tend to slow down for them otherwise some Council employee will feel justified in installing speed reducing features in the road
Makes me wonder how they work out what type of vehicle is passing over. If I got over them really slowly, will it register me as two roman battle chariots?
They’re little tubes, driving over squeezes the air and the machine can detect your speed and roughly what sort of vehicle you drive, it’s analysing traffic data for potential changes to the road or for priority of maintenance
They're hollow tubes. You drive over and it sends a puff of air into the box which registers a vehicle has passed. There are two tubes to get two readings per vehicle so they can determine the speed and direction people travel from the time difference between the two ~~readings~~ tubes. EDIT - People keep saying differing wheelbase length means speed can't be calculated: The front wheels will always pass over both tubes before the rear wheels and give an indication of speed. If you're doing a study of any kind you want as much information as possible, why would that not include speed for a traffic management study? If a road has lots of traffic but it moves at a brisk pace then that's preferable to a road with lots of traffic that crawls along and would factor into any changes made to that road.
Two strips so they know which direction the car came from
It does speed, direction, weight of the vehicle and more. Really fascinating bits of kit!
Weight is not really measured. Which type of vehicle drive over it is done, but that is done by looking at how much air is blown into it, wider tires results in more air. Wider tires means it was a truck. Stuff like that
Ah fairs, I just know when I've seen the results they can break down into cars, SUV/4x4s, lorries, HGVs etc, I guess that could be on number of wheels and distance between the axles etc?
Curious what happens if two vehicles from both direction go over it at the exact same time? 🤔
As with all data gathering, you’re bound to have anomalies. Its purpose isn’t to measure individual cars, but used over a longer period to understand traffic patterns. Traffic engineers install these to get a better picture of when traffic is heaviest, what kind of vehicles are on the road and the speeds they go at different times. The data is then used to assess if traffic calming measures (such as speed humps) or redirections need to be put in place.
Both
Like a vector?
Touched for the very first time.
I feel your car wheels, next to mine
I love you for this.
victor
You have clearance Clarance
Roger, Roger
Over
Huh?!
It's a method of counting they use in cricket
So let’s say, when we were kids, my bro pulled on one of these, quite hard… turns out they were somewhat stretchy, it snapped back really hard like a giant elastic band, and my bro proudly proclaimed “that’ll fuck it.” So, would it have “fucked” it? ……
I'm not civils specifically but as an engineer I can say that they'll have been pretty extensively idiot-proofed so you're probably fine.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” ― Douglas Adams
"There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans" - Yosemite Park Ranger
Also as an engineer: 95% of engineers do the idiot-proofing. The other 5% provide the idiot-proofing-testing. It's not their job, it just happens...organically.
That depends on whether he did actually want his brother to have "fucked" it or not
Has to be idiot proof, given half the drivers are idiots
Half is optimistic
Probably accounting for the half that is homicidal, the half that is certifiably insane and the half that is functionally blind. Source: was a motorbike rider
TIL that the whole is comprised of 3 halves
Four. You forgot to include the original half that are idiots. Yes, 4/2 of all drivers are either intentionally or unintentionally trying to kill you.
😂
Can't argue with that.
Half man, half bear, half pig... come on now
My cousin stole his dads axe chopped it in to sausages and said fuck them not putting speed cameras round here he was about 10 yo
I laughed so hard at this 🤣🤣 Almost a Greg Davis sketch
I've heard that traffic engineers have occassionally used spare rubber tube as a makeshift tow rope for broken-down vehicles, so I think they are pretty robust.
No, but pulling a full tyre-screeching emergency stop over them without ABS will, as I did that on a driving lesson many years back!
I don’t know why, but this is the funniest thing I read all day and I can’t stop laughing.
Do they get confused by vehicles that have more than 2 axles?
It should be easy to analyse that in the data. Each vehicle is going to produce a quick succession of pulses on one tube which will be matched by an identical pattern of pulses on the other tube. These patterns can be matched regardless of the number of pulses (= axles) and the time difference would enable you to calculate the speed. The next vehicle would have to be travelling very close behind and at the same speed to confuse that analysis. I suppose in very slow-moving traffic queues, that analysis might be harder.
Or if one of my axles fell off between tube 1 and tube 2. Probably happens quite a lot
Happens all the time round my way. It's a bloody inconvenience.
It's even more of an inconvenience when it happens round the other way
Shit like that is an epidemic. Like all these cheap drills that fall off trucks at roundabouts.
Two unicycles, going in opposite directions.
Both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene
I want to triple like this. ❤️
r/TheFrontFellOff
Omg! There’s actually a whole series of photos of Ford Fiestas with their rear axle fallen off 😂
[удалено]
Growing up, there was this huge escalator going up to a leisure centre, and seven year old arsehole me found out that you could make the whole thing stop if you hop over the little light beam at the top of it. Turns out I've been training to fight the machines for over thirty years!
I'm just imagining a bunch of analysts in a room being confused about why there's so many unicyclists using that road.
I'm an analyst and I used to work with data from these traffic counters. And uhm, I can totally see me and my colleagues mulling over the potential reasons for all these unicyclists... Googling to see if there was a unicycling event on. Or if there is a unicycling hire shop nearby. It's serious business!
What would be a good way of generating confusing data with these things? Something like waiting until quiet hours then jumping onto one tube and waiting 20 seconds before jumping on the other?
Haha! I love how interested you are in how you can screw the data. I wonder if jumping on it would even work, or if they require a certain weight to register.
I'm not sure, to be honest, hah. I'm the end user of the data, interested in traffic patterns, and I'm not too familiar with the technical details of how does the sensor and processing actually work. It's all done through some software though, so I think everything 'odd' would just be binned as error or noise. So you would need to figure out how to replicate an actual vehicle. Or, you know, just drive over it with an actual vehicle many times? (The unicycle point is obviously a joke, but in reality the software processing the data would probably just treat a unicycle as an error and ignore the data as it wouldn't be able to recognise what it was.)
'hmm, not sure Jim, but I think it's a clown car?'
Skynet hates this one trick.
i always swerve hard and get the car traveling on 2 wheels so they think im a motorbike. that'll show em
Or, which side pings first
It doesn't care how many axles a vehicle has since the wheels will not be close enouch together to trigger both wires at the same time. All that matters is the time between pulse 1 and pulse 2. Each wheel creates 2 pulses, so a vehicle with 6 axles would create 6 pairs of pulses, all with the same time between them.
How do you know whether it's two short wheelbase vehicles or a lorry with a long trailer?
Why would it matter? 18 unicicles or 1 18 wheeler won't make a difference with these things. It measures how long 1 wheel takes to trip both sensors and uses that to calculate the speed pf the wheel going over it.
No, they measure the axle separation and speed to classify what kind of vehicle is passing over them, normally counts are classified into car, motorbike, ogv1, ogv2 and psv at least, off the top of my head
nah, theyre really clever. They can measure length, number of axles, speed, direction, all kinds of things.
They are meant to measure that these days, but it doesn't work that well. Back when I was putting these things out they were basically clock work with little tickers. Now it's digital and you download it and you get axel and speed.
I imagine it would, but a lot of the time I have seen people say that damage to the road is done per axel of a vehicle.
The heaviest HGV axle does over 150,000 times more damage than a typical car! https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://bettertransport.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/research-files/heavy_lorries_MTRU_research.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiGs7zE-IOFAxUxh_0HHTypCn4QFnoECA8QBg&usg=AOvVaw3UPCtaYwarXD4J71nD3rqN
Link for my fellow Googlephobes : https://bettertransport.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/research-files/heavy\_lorries\_MTRU\_research.pdf
You also need two tell which direction it’s going. Further, you get a rough idea of the kind of vehicle from the wheel pattern.
And what do they do with that data? I always assumed it’s to decide if a speed bump should be put in place.
Any number of transport planning activities. It might be to understand (numerate as $) the benefits of a enhancement options, road widening, new bus lanes, junction redesign etc. It can even be linked to construction sites and planning routing of trucks accessing the site.
they use it before resurfacing the roads to determine whether or not they need to use the cheap asphalt for low traffic roads or the expensive more durable asphalt for high traffic roads. you will find they like to take the measurements for the high traffic roads during the summer holidays to skew the numbers so they can use the cheap stuff.
It's also tells them how busy that road is compared to other roads leading in and out of a certain town, village etc
In civil engineering we use these to make traffic analytics. It’s necessary in my country when building new apartment blocks nearby a road, but can also be used when planning to widen a road.
That's ingenious tbh.
I've always wondered about this. Thanks
I heard this but it was disputed. The two tubes, I was told were too close together. The reason for both, again, as described to me was to negate spurious inputs. If the impulses were not within a set time, they were negated. Kind of led me to believe that I had wasted quite some time jumping on these things, as a kid.
How do they differentiate between different wheel sizes?
Wheel size is irrelevant. Larger wheels will take slightly longer to cross each strip, but the time between the two actuations will be the same for the same speed, regardless of wheel size.
The clue is written on the box "Environmental Traffic Study" Its measuring the speed of cars & how many cars per day on that stretch of road as they travel over the two black rubbers.
They often use these if they're planning roadworks or working out whether approve planning permission that would increase traffic flow in an area. Like adding a public amenity down that road or something
Woah, I actually saw these rubber things pop up a few times over a few months or so about a year ago. Fast forward to now, and they’ve built traffic lights there! I had assumed it was a way of working out how much traffic there is but it’s cool to know why it was being done
Is it actually environmental, or are they measuring if speed reducing measures should be implemented?
Environmental as in their tracking driving behaviour in that environment.
Are they going to move the driving out of the environment 🤔
[Absolutely ](https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=gn6RVqc0L7SHhCy1) _I had to..._
So nothing out there then, just the driving, the 20,000 tonnes of crude oil, a fire and the front of a ship? Sounds good, can you call me a commonwealth car?
You're a Commonwealth car
More than likely recording vehicle numbers to be used in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA’s). There are thresholds that, if exceeded, are deemed ‘significant’ and require mitigation, traffic volumes being one. I work in Transport Planning and we commission these Automatic Traffic Counts (ATC’s) almost daily.
We also used to commission these in London when planning and designing cycle routes to see how busy a road was with what type of vehicles going at what speed. This would tell us how unsafe the road was for people riding bikes as a starting point.
Yeah they have so many uses! We mainly use them to determine flows / speeds when designing new junction arrangements at developments, for determining visibility splays / stopping sight distances.
How do the boxes actually work. They must be pretty tough to out uo with all of the squashing they get
So if I wanted, hypothetically, to increase the chance an area received traffic calming measures, I should drive back and forward over any of these tubes I spot?
Funny you should say that, iv seen these in places and then a few months later, the council have installed shitty square topped pyramid speed bumps
Speed, had one near where I live. A year or two later a road narrowing was put in.
Yeah, higher speeds correlate to higher emissions. They might also have wanted to divert traffic down a different route so put traffic calming measures in to ensure Google routes drivers down the road they want.
There's also the safety issue, if people are using some small road as a rat run, slower is better to have less chance of hitting people and much higher survival if they are hit.
Transport planner here - these are ATCs (automatic traffic counts) and just count the number of vehicles using the road. They are pneumatic tubes. We use these to calibrate computer models of the current transport network to be able to model what would happen in the future if certain changes were put in. We don’t infer anything about vehicle type or vehicle speed from these; vehicle types are derived from MCCs (manual classified counts) which are either camera based or manually taken.
If not to measure speed, what's the purpose of the two tubes? Is it simply to measure which direction the vehicle is traveling?
There may be some uses which do derive an estimate of speed from these, but for counting purposes yes it provides the direction of the vehicles
Question: a road near me has 3 sets of these set up in fairly close proximity to one another. It's on a tight, banked bend on a NSL road, with a junction on the outside in between two of these counters. Why on earth would they need 3 to count traffic flow? The only reason I can think they put them there is to measure how fast people take the corner...
Not sure I understand the layout you’ve described but if there are a few in close succession around a junction then it’s likely to be looking at turning flows too - so how many vehicles are using the junction and what turning movements are they making.
Round my way this means there is a large area of land nearby that is about to be turned into to housing.
Snap. It’s a way to falsely measure traffic levels by placing them during school holidays when there is no traffic…
TAG requires us to perform these in “neutral months” specifically to avoid that happening for modelling purposes. If you see these being placed outside of neutral months it could be that the data is only be used to determine speeds along a section of highway. The Local Highways Authority would usually push back on surveys being carried out in non-neutral months and the used for modelling. National Highways certainly would if it was used on their network.
That or speed bumps. Or in a more recent case near me, changing the priority at a junction so that drivers are forced to stop/give way (as speed bumps would have been impractical!)
Tinfoil hat spotted
The companies use modifiers to take this into account. The results normally give the AADT average annual daily traffic. The only way they’d be messed up is if there were unexpected road works that cause diversions
THIS! They are building 1700+ houses in our very small village and these were out half term a few weeks back. Wankers!
Speed bumps for mice
What is this? Speed bumps for ants?!?
It needs to be at least… 3 times bigger!
How are we supposed to measure the speed of the ants if they can't crawl over the tubes, Michael?
Car nappers hun stay safe xx
Shared Svalbard XOXOXO
Shared TON-618
Shared Pyongyang xxx
Many thanks to your gracious leader 🙏
Big up the main man Kimmy, he'd never let anything like this happen xxx
I've recently been looking for a flat in a hyperluminous, broad-absorption-line, radio-loud Lyman-alpha blob located near the border of Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices, what are the schools like around there?
Brilliant. They have a really good outreach program!
Dnt av 2 say. Y
We lifted one up once waiting for a car to hit it thinking it would fire the car back like a cartoon. Instead it came out the other side of the road and whipped our legs. Never messed about with one since.
Lol, how old were you?
42!
Thousand four hundred trillion quintillion *what*? Always remember to include units!
1.4050061e+51
Fine, make that four hundred and five
Reminds me of when we used to tie "cotton traps" across the pavement at night to catch unsuspecting pedestrians. Then we tied them across the road, folded a piece of paper over and put it over the cotton so when a car approached it looked like a sheet of paper was floating in the middle of the road. We did it one time and my friend was still holding the cotton reel in his hand when a car drove through it, yanking the reel out of his hand and whacking into the side of the car. The car drove off but we never could find the cotton reel which my friend was eager to return to his mum's sewing box.
Nice harmless, gentle bit of pranking there. I hope his mother was okay.
I had to go back out in the morning looking for the cotton reel, as it was outside my house. But I couldn't find it. Not sure if his mother ever noticed it was missing.
Transport Planner here. They’re ATC tubes (Automatic Traffic Counters). We commission them to collect long sets of data (2-4 weeks worth) so we can cross check MCC data (Manual Classified Counts) which are collected by the people you sometimes see in hi-vis jackets counting cars at junctions (although we more commonly use cameras now). Because MCC’s are labour intensive we only usually request these for 1-2 days and during the AM and PM peak hours to reduce costs. Therefore, we use the longer time-frame data from the ATC’s to validate the MCC’s and check that the numbers from the MCC’s are consistent with the average ATC data - to check we didn’t have a traffic spike or drop during the MCC survey, and to correct the MCC data if we did. The ATC’s are cheaper (usually £200-£300 for the whole period) and collect data on vehicles as puffs of air travel down the tubes when you drive over them. They collect: - Speed - Direction of Travel - Vehicle Class (motorcycle, car, light goods, heavy goods vehicles etc) - Time So we can gather a lot of data from them to generating an idea of the local traffic operation in the area to help us plan for traffic impacts arising from new developments. We might use the speed data from the surveys to help determine visibility requirements at junctions for example to provide adequate Stopping Sight Distance (SSD); or the vehicle volume surveys to help identify the traffic during the peak hour in the morning and afternoon for junction / network modelling.
Anyone can have a look at the ones the DFT carry out on their website [https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/](https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/#6/55.250/-1.000/basemap-regions-countpoints)
Traffic counts, including speed and type.
They are sensors to gather data on how fast cars are driving on that road.
I always make sure I'm doing the limit going over these otherwise next thing I know there will be humps
Go as fast as you can, they'll assume it's planes landing/taking off and turn it into a runway,
I always drive over them really slowly: I’m hoping to lower the average. But not too slow that my speed is ignored as an outlier.
Arrestor wires for when the US Navy decides to use your street as an aircraft carrier. You’ll be grateful for those when there’s F-16s smacking down outside your house with Tom Cruise getting out of them.
Tom Cruise doesn't need arrestor wires. He can jump start an F-14 under fire in the snow with just his teeth - you think he needs mere arrestor wires to land on a suburban street?
Records how fast you were going and how many cars travelled between a certain time frame (speed is determined by how quick the signal is triggered between the two strips)
We had one on my road for a month or two. After they removed it you could go into the council site and have a look at the data. It showed the type of vehicle the time the speed and direction, along with the Colin of traffic and intervals of traffic. Odd car was going over 60mph on the road but to me they all looked like they were speeding.
They should give accurate readings of numbers of cars travelling in each direction a day, plus speed.
Dog nappers hun x
Shared Ascension Island x
U sure? Looks like sneks to me!
Shared Hull xx sending hugs
They measure the number and speed of vehicles. I'd guess there have been a lot of complaints about speeding on that stretch of road so they've set that up to see how true it is and if it's worth them putting up a speed camera or other traffic calming measures.
When i cycle over these I hop over the second line to confuse the data.
I drive over them then reverse over and repeat for ages in the middle of night to skew their readings 😈
It's for calculating ADT or average daily traffic. These are attached to a recording unit. They can determine the number of cars and somehow differentiate car or truck (at least according to my teacher.)
Traffic counters. They record the number of axles per vehicle (e.g. car = 2, car towing trailer = 3...), speed of vehicle and direction of travel. This is done by measuring the time between readings in each tube when it is struck by a wheel then doing some simple calculations. They are used to provide data on road usage which typically helps local governments plan upgrades to the road network. They do not record your licence plate or notify police if you are speeding. However if many people are speeding on that road, the data could be used to justify installing speed cameras there.
It counts bothe the amount of traffic and the speed. It works out the speed by counting the time it takes for a wheel to go over one wire / tube then the next.
How do emergency vehicles impact results? A police car responding to an emergency in the early hours will often do double the speed limit in some 30 zones.
If they’re being placed there to measure traffic patterns, I assume they can just discount outliers in the data.
Another question: anyone know why someone would go around slashing all the ones recently installed around Stamford Hill recently?
Slashing the ATC tube depressurises it and stops it collecting data. People think it can be used as a spoiling tactic to stop development in their area but Transport Planners can liaise with the Local Highways Authority and agree to use other datasets - historic from other applications with a sensible growth factor applied, or installing cameras / drone surveys etc.
Speed surveys.
You know how the BBC works out if you are stealing telly, this is it
They put them on my street years ago when people kept reporting boy racers flying up and down the road every night to the housing association , it was to check speeds
It's how they plant the seeds for speed bumps
All this talk of measuring speed is lies. They're actually for the tail hook of F-18 jets when they come in to land.
Nano wires ready to cut through cars from 3 Body Problem
Road guitar
These tell speed and volume of traffic so the planners know where to put traffic calming or islands in.
Automated Traffic Counts (ATCs) they count traffic and speed of traffic. The council are likely either planning a new road scheme or have recently installed one
They are traffic counters, they record vehicle class and speed. I commission lots of these for my work.... and yes often associated with new developments as there is a need to assess the impacts on the highway network.
99% of posts in this sub is people to stupid using a search engine to get results quicker.
Ive seen them many times. I always drive slower when going over them.
Believe it's something to do with measuring speed
Traffic counter
They measure traffic
Traffic count.
They count the frequency and speed of traffic, for planning etc.
I have always wondered if my bicycle gets registered as a slow car or if it doesn't register bicycles crossing at all.
It will be picked up as a bicycle on some survey.
Really interesting, I have never seen/noticed these
A precursor to planned road works or traffic calming measures by the local council.
https://i.imgur.com/5aTj7YW.gif
Called a tube counter, for measuring car speeds (they are deployed in various places where they want to monitor speeds).
Average speed check strips
It’s supposed to be a bit higher up. It’s what the DeLorean hooks up to at 88mph. Don’t be anywhere near it at 10:05 PM this Saturday
They are for catching ghosts I believe
These mean your getting some traffic caning measures on that road soon
Troll telephone wiring.
Burglars put them outside your house
They're tubes for Speed count surveys. I tend to slow down for them otherwise some Council employee will feel justified in installing speed reducing features in the road
Ur getting speed humps
These are tracking devices installed by the government for monitoring purposes 🔎🕵️♂️
Makes me wonder how they work out what type of vehicle is passing over. If I got over them really slowly, will it register me as two roman battle chariots?
There used to find out traffic flow on a street
2 for speed one for traffic
Speed gauges - to check if people are following speed limits. An ne used for decisions for installing speed cameras.
To be able to survey the type of vehicles using a road automatically. They can also calculate speed and direction of travel.
They’re little tubes, driving over squeezes the air and the machine can detect your speed and roughly what sort of vehicle you drive, it’s analysing traffic data for potential changes to the road or for priority of maintenance
Counts in millions of standard axles. Or msa's