Regulatory signs - highway signs and meanings
In terms of man-made conditions, oil leaks and spills can cause the roadways to become slick and dangerous. Leaking fluid accumulates over time, creating slick spots that are hard to identify when drivers are traveling at full speed.
Knight RiderLEDlightscannerBarRed
If you’ve never wired anything before, this can be a mysterious art. What we’re doing here is creating a circuit – a continuous path from our Pi, onto the board, through the LED, through the resistor, and back to the Pi.
When the weather gets cold, bridges tend to freeze first and thaw out last, making them especially dangerous to drive on. You might also notice additional signs underneath the slippery when wet road sign . They are there to explain the reason why a specific section of the road or bridge is more slippery than others.
I’m going to give you a little background on resistors, because I use two different types in this tutorial for no other reason than that’s what I had available. However, it’s worth understanding the different types so when you go shopping for yours you understand what you are buying.
There we go. Now you’ve got all your stuff together, put it to one side and let’s focus on getting the code ready before we do any connecting up.
If you see a slippery when wet road sign during poor driving conditions, start slowing down immediately. Ease your foot off the accelerator to slow down gradually. Braking suddenly or turning sharply could send your vehicle into a dangerous skid.
Thankfully, there are some actions you can do to increase your chances of getting to your destination safely. First, make sure that your brakes and tires are in good condition and that your vehicle is winter-ready.
Knight Rider light barillegal
Knight RiderLEDlight bar
Even if you’re driving in the rain or snow, you can practice a few smart habits to keep you safe. Stay alert at all times and look for the slippery when wet road sign while you drive so you’ll remember the most dangerous spots when it’s raining or snowing.
When you’re driving on wet or icy roads, remember to use your turn signal sooner than you would normally. This will let other drivers know that you’re getting ready to turn earlier than usual so they can slow down sooner to help prevent a collision.
The resistor bridges row 55 onto the negative bus (or ground). The buses on the outside of the board are connected in two columns – the opposite of the inner rows. So we now have a connection between our resistor and our white jumper lead. The white lead finally goes back to the ground GPIO pin on the Pi.
Note that when you CTRL-C out of the program, your LED may remain on – this will happen if you interrupt the program before the GPIO pin is told to stop the output. It will be reset when you run your code again, but you may want to avoid pulling wires in and out when the GPIO pin is active, just in case.
Knight Rider light Baroriginal
By Patrick Mileham DriveSafe Online Contributing Writer Speeding tickets are part of your driving record so they may increase the amount you pay for insurance. That’s the bad news. The good news is there are several factors that must occur to actually trigger a rate...
Your State-By-State Guide to Child Passenger Safety Regulations Child passenger safety regulations are in place because a leading cause of death for children, one in every four, is driving-related accidents. Each one of these deaths is a terrible tragedy, but you may...
This sign is put in place to warn drivers when there may be some slippery, slick conditions ahead. You’ll usually find the sign installed near a bridge or overpass. These areas tend to be slicker than the rest of the pavement during freezing or wet weather.
Practice driving on icy roads whenever possible so you get a better feel for your brakes and how quickly your car can come to a complete stop.
Make sure your windows are clean so you have a clear field of vision. Replace damaged windshield wipers and install wiper blades designed for wet, winter driving.
First of all, the bands. The colours represent numbers – this is just easier than printing teeny, tiny font on them. There are lots of online calculators and explanations for the colours, so I’ll leave that up to you to read about later.
As I said in the intro, we’re going to use the wiringPi library to talk to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. It was written by Gordon Henderson and I have been so impressed with its ease of installation and use.
In wiring terms, we connect the GPIO 17 to an inner row (row 57) on the breadboard (via the brown wire). The inner rows are connected by metal strips underneath the cover (but not the inner columns). When you plug something into a row, the circuit will continue to any other item that is also plugged into that row. In our case the circuit will find an LED.
In this section we’ll install the wiringPi library on the Raspberry Pi, connect up a single LED, and write a simple program in C to make it flash.
I’m going to assume at this point that you have a Raspberry Pi that is up and running on the network. If you haven’t, then the Raspberry Pi website is the best place to start, or you can look at my post on headless boot of the Pi, if you like a challenge ;-).
This is the first part of a two-parter on creating the K.I.T.T. light bar with LEDs using your Raspberry Pi (I know, awesome, right?).
If you have received an auto insurance rate increase, a traffic ticket, or need to take a court-ordered defensive driving course, visit our website or contact us today to learn more about how we can help.
Certain surfaces are especially slick, which is why you’ll notice a slippery when wet road sign specifically placed on various roads or parts of a highway.
In essence all you need to do is ask for 330 ohm resistors, but the info above will help you if you are given blue ones or brown ones and you don’t want to feel like an idiot for asking what the difference is (like I did – I knew I should have paid more attention when I was little and my Dad was fixing the telly).
Knight rider kitt light barprice
So there we go – part 1 complete. In part 2 we’ll wire up some more components and edit our program to create the K.I.T.T light bar.
Knight Riderlights for car
These extra signs contain information to warn drivers of additional threats. Words like ICE, STEEL DECK, or EXCESS OIL are there to warn you about the possibilities of slick road conditions. Look for this extra info so you can understand the causes of slippery roadways and proceed with caution.
If you’re planning to drive at night during the winter, pay special attention and look for black ice. This ice can be extremely deceiving and can cause a serious crash if you don’t slow down before you drive over it.
You don’t need a keyboard or monitor for this tutorial – if your Pi is on the network you can log in via ssh and do everything from a terminal.
A breadboard is a way to create electrical circuits without having to use a soldering iron. Very handy. You can get them in shops (like Maplin in the UK) that sell electrical components, or buy them online. They come in various sizes. I’m using a “full size” board, with two power buses (the outer columns), 63 rows, and 10 inner columns. You can use a half size board – as long as it has at least 31 rows you won’t need to change the wiring in this tutorial. My breadboard looks like this:
You can’t go far wrong with these. They come singly and in multi-packs (I bought a pack of 10), and although there are specifics such as light angle, colour, brightness, etc., for our purposes any old working LED will do, so don’t spend more than you need to:
There’s lots of info on using Python on the Pi, but you know I’m from an old-school embedded background, so we’ll be doing all this in the C programming language instead.
Driving on slick roads can result in a serious accident. Even the best drivers can be vulnerable to a wreck if they’re not aware of road conditions or the many threats that driving on a wet road can present.
Knight Rider lightfor truck
To make matter worse, approximately 350,000 people are injured, and almost 4,500 people are killed as a result of crashes on slippery roadways. Wet roads result in slick surfaces that make it more difficult to stop in time to prevent a serious crash.
Wet roads reduce the friction between the road itself and your tires. When there’s less friction, the surface becomes slick and it’s much more difficult to stop your vehicle safely. Pay attention to slippery when wet road signs so you’re more aware of these dangerous conditions, even when the weather is clear.
It’ also smart to plan your route in advance. Check the news to find out road conditions for your travel. If accidents are reported, you have time to avoid those problem areas.
Lots of connectors and components are termed male/female in electronics depending on whether they (to put it bluntly) stick in or out. We want male-female connectors because the Pi has GPIO pins that go into the female end, and the breadboard has holes that require the pins on the male end:
Look at your tire tread. Does it still have at least 2/32 of an inch of tread depth? An easy way to determine this is to place a penny head-first in the tread groove. If you can see Abe Lincoln’s head, the tread is worn and you need to replace your tires.
You’ve probably passed it a thousand times and didn’t even realize what the slippery when wet road sign looks like. This diamond-shaped sign features an icon of a car with two swerving lines underneath which represent the car possible losing control due to slick conditions.
When the weather is rainy, drivers also have a much more difficult time seeing clearly, which makes it harder to drive safely. Snowfall and icy roadways are other contributing factors.
According to a report from the Federal Highway Administration, approximately 900,000 of all crashes occur on wet roads. Almost 600,000 of road crashes happen while it’s raining.
Our thoughts are with all those in Nashville and across the great state of Tennessee affected by the recent tornadoes. The safety of our DriveSafe Online family, customers and partners is our primary concern. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called for residents to stay...
I shouldn’t need to tell you any more about the Pi and power adapter – I’m assuming you’ve either got one already or are thinking about buying one. Onto the components:
When driving on wet roads, drive slower than usual so you can stop in time if needed. Travel at a reasonable speed and avoid tailgating behind other drivers.
Second, the number of bands – this is where it becomes a little more complex. I’m using resistors with 4 bands (orange, orange, brown, gold) and resistors with 5 bands (orange, orange, black, black, brown):
Knight Riderscannerlightwith sound
Rain can make it difficult to see clearly while driving, which already poses a threat to safety. However, even if the rain has stopped, the wet roadways can be perilous, so drive with caution. Snow and ice can also create dangerous, slick conditions for drivers.
This is the list of items you’ll need. If you want clarification on any of these (buying electrical components is a bit of a leap in the dark the first time you do it), have a look at the pictures and further info below. If you’re pretty familiar with these things, then grab the list, skip the details and move onto Step 2.
Check to find out if your vehicle uses an anti-lock braking system, also called ABS. If it does, you can hold your brakes down when stopping. If you don’t have ABS, tap the brake pedal instead of holding it down to help prevent your vehicle from sliding off the roadway or into another car.
Patrick M. is Editorial Director for the always expanding DriveSafe Online library of courses. With over two decades of experience developing award-winning training, he now focuses on innovating online driver safety training. Pulling from his background in journalism, he steers the wheel behind the creation of top-tier content that promotes a better journey—whether on the digital highway of learning or the real roads we travel every day.
Warning: From this point onwards it matters whether you have a revision 1 or 2 Raspberry Pi. Why? Because the GPIO pins are in a different order on the revision 2 boards. You can completely fry your Pi if you get the wiring wrong, so make sure you have a pin mapping to refer to. I will point out differences (I use a revision 1 board), but your Pi is counting on YOU to wire it up correctly.