What are those black rubber hoses for any way?

Forums: Autos, Driving, Traffic
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Any one ever notice that sometimes there are these things - looks like black rubber hoses - laying across a road or highway exit? You drive over them and you feel a little bump. Lately I have seen lots of them along many exits off the highway south of Boston. What are they there for?

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[+3] - Ticomaya - 09/26/2005I believe they are to count the number of cars passing over them ... for traffic studies. At least that's what I've always thought.

I believe they are to count the number of cars passing over them ... for traffic studies. At least that's what I've always thought.

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That is what my educated guess is too - seems logical. It was either that or they put them down to annoy me.

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Do you think if I kept backing up and driving over and over them I would screw the whole stats up?

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The devices are pneumatic. A car drives over the hose and air pressure cause the counter to record a vehicle. I had a friend who had an MG (this was in the 60's) who used to go around and lift the back end over the hose thinking it would record one half a car. I'm not certain that works.

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I think it would be a waste of time (and dangerous) as trucks passing over them would record one and a half vehicles.

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i thought they could monitor speed.....

thats why i wear tinfoil..

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I was thinking that once too Shewolfnm, but then I realized I would have had several speeding tickets as a result.

Then I thought - maybe they were just left there because of construction or something (there is always some sort of construction going on. But this is the first time I noticed several in once area - all on exit ramps - so I suspected that there was more to it than just random hoses left around.

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shewolfnm wrote:

i thought they could monitor speed.....

thats why i wear tinfoil..

That's what we were always told growing up.

Then, a friend of mine brought up how it would be impossible to measure the speed of a car by measuring the time between the front tires and the back tires of a car going 65 plus mph.

When I was a new driver though, I would always slow down if I saw one. Like as if there were a cop sitting there measuring it.

Laughing

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i was thinking the same thing

not that they can identify the specific car that was going by at that speed...
but.. it was a way to find the places in town that had the MOST speeders and with in the next 24 hours, i thought, there would be a cop where the black hose was..

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And thanks to my question, we are all a little bit smarter today.

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so

lets all go out and find some black hoses~

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Indeed older speed measuring devices used the black hoses but with the advent of radar they were phased out. They are used now for counting vehicles.

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I am bringing this back as in my town there has shown up a plethora of these black hoses. I am now driving back and forth and over and over on these hoses just to mess up the counting.

So why do you think all of a sudden there are several located throughout my town? What are they planning? Hopefully it is good spending for my tax money. Maybe I will call town hall to find out what is happening.

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@Linkat,

They often have to do with determining where traffic lights will be put in.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

They often have to do with determining where traffic lights will be put in.

This^ or trying to determine speed limit changes in a given area.

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@ehBeth,

It would make sense, but they are in random areas - not at street crossings where you would expect potential lights - two are nearby the schools (high school and middle school) the other is on a high traffic area but just random in the middle of the route - not at any sort of intersection - not too far though from a busy intersection that already has lights.

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@Linkat,

The school examples just helps my speed checking theory.

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@tsarstepan,

true - we had some a while ago that resulted in our block being turned into a one-way (just our block, not our street)

also had some that resulted in a flashing light going in at the top of the street - two blocks over they got a new set of lights

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@tsarstepan,

Its funny they do not have any school zone signs --- I always found that odd. And the middle school is on a very busy highly traffic road - granted they have a long road into the school itself, but the road has a fairly high speed limit.

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What are those black rubber hoses for any way?

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