It's also probably illegal. Most jurisdictions have such a law - about tampering with traffic control devices.
Every jurisdiction has laws about that. The fact that U of M released a paper on how they did it, then I managed to reverse engineer it. Emergency vehicles have this device on board. I figured out how to clone it. Its super illegal to use that ability. However it doesn't stop me from having it. I've never used it but I have often wondered what would happen if I did.
EDIT: what would happen traffic wise, not what would happen legally.
As long as it's just you - it won't do much damage. They change the lights, but it's not immediate.
Now, if you had a bunch of them - or a bunch of people have them... That's a different story.
Back when the active traffic management was a new thing and these devices were gaining popularity, we examined what a non-skilled (not that you're not skilled) hack would look like and wrote a few contingency plans and reports for a large municipality. Mostly, they'd just fuck stuff up for a while and people would go about their day.
The true danger lies in if they actually understand traffic. From inside your car, traffic may not look all that complicated. It's actually pretty fucking complex.
Not sure if I'm making sense. I'm kinda shitfaced.
Oh I was had a few when I wrote that last message so no worries on the shit faced part. I'm glad to know I couldn't fuck things up too much. Unless I spend some time studying traffic. Then I could do some real damage. You know it almost never occurred to me study traffic even after discussing things with you all this time. I should study traffic. That way if I ever go crazy at least I can have some real fun. Or at least if I really don't want to be at work I can bring the city's traffic to a stop and listen to podcasts in my car.
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