Yeah I know these are used for counting vehicles but can they also be used for detecting vehicle speed?

Description: two pneumatic hoses, affixed to a road. They lead to a box that’s locked to a telephone pole. Location is southern California. On a minor artery road.

Doubtful that it’s to survey if a new stop sign is needed since the next street is minor, dead ends into this one and already has a stop sign. The next intersection with another minor artery already has a stop sign.

Extremely doubtful that a traffic light is being considered since there isn’t anywhere near the amount of traffic to justify one.

This is located on a slope. Many cars speed down here. That’s why I’m wondering about speed sensing by this device.

  • @4am@lemm.eeEnglish
    62•7 months ago

    They measure speed (how long between compression of each hose), direction (which hose was hit first), weight (how much was each hose squeezed), and axel count (how many pairs of wheels went over).

    When you are calculating road wear, number of axels (and weight) is more important than number of vehicles.

    You can often derive the number and type of vehicles by the pattern of “hits”. A passenger car will have a different pattern than an 18-wheeler; a van will have a longer wheelbase than a motorcycle, etc.

    • @BakerBagel@midwest.socialEnglish
      43•7 months ago

      It blew my kond ehen i foind oit that engineers won’t even factor in cars when designing major bridges because they are essentially a rounding error compared to semi-trucks.

          • @BakerBagel@midwest.socialEnglish
            16•7 months ago

            Haha, not quite. Was having a drink and smoking a cigar after work. I know i should proofread more since my autocorrect has been absolutely dog shit for the past 6 years, but i just can’t commit to it.

            If anyone has a half-decent Android keyboard recommendedation, I’m absolutely down to switch.

            • @daq@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              6•7 months ago

              Microsoft SwiftKey is not bad if you don’t mind the data gathering. I swiped this whole reply and only had to correct one word.

              • @CoolMatt@lemmy.caEnglish
                2•7 months ago

                I love swipe, but it types competent won’t completely wrong words all the time for me wtf am I doing wrong

                • @daq@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                  2•7 months ago

                  I don’t know. Maybe I’ve trained it throughout the years or maybe I don’t even notice when I correct shit, but it works well enough for me that I don’t really notice its imperfections anymore. Either way I’ve not found a better swipe keyboard so MS can have all my typed data in exchange for this convenience.

                  • @CoolMatt@lemmy.caEnglish
                    1•7 months ago

                    Hmm, I believe you! Maybe I should reset it and start over then. Swipe works so terribly for me I end up typing letter by letter most of the time. It gets really tiring on the fingers when your phone is a tool for work

      • @Kiosade@lemmy.caEnglish
        27•7 months ago

        Kinda true. Regular cars have an Equivalent Single-Axle Load (ESAL) of 0.0004. Basically, it takes about 9,600 cars to put as much wear on the pavement as one 5-axle Semi.