Are emergency vehicles ever able to influence traffic stop lights?

Yes. It is called traffic signal preemption. There is a little doodad on top of the lights that can be triggered by approaching emergency vehicles.

Most of the traffic lights on our major streets have a sensor so that emergency vehicles can adjust the signal.

Yes, they can do that and they do it here.

Yes. At least where I live as @zenvelo mentions our lights have a “dodad” on top the traffic signals that will flash a bright white warning flash as the lights change in favor of the approaching emergency vehicle.

Yes. They can (or at least could) trigger them with a strobe light. A old school hacker buddy of mine in high school (think simulating the sound of coins dropping in a payphone for free long distance) figured out how to do it so he could set any light at a major intersection to green.

This was of course so amazingly illegal he only did it a few times just to prove he could.

^ Thanks for your reply.

I will be investigating this for personal use.

I’d never heard of this before today. I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned on more TV shows and movies.

I live in the sticks and the nearest town is small enough that there probably aren’t many ‘doodads’. Given the number of times I’m in town at a stop light when there’s an emergency vehicle, it’s not surprising I’d not seen it before.

I guess the cops have this, too? I swear I’ve seen police cars blow through on red in the same town – almost certainly this year. Of course, they might have shorter starts and stops.

Yes, in Worcester a popular intersection would turn red to allow only ambulances to go through, when I lived there. It’s as easy as using an EZpass esque system.

“It’s as easy as using an EZpass esque system.”

Ahhhh… Faint praise.

I need to move some furniture. Oh, couldn’t be any problem there. I’ll just take my EZ Pass ‘sponder with me in my friends truck!

Weeks later:

What’s this? It’s a letter from so called EZ Pass… It’s not my bill? What could it be?

“Darling? EZ Pass has notified us of charging us a fine.”

“Fine? For what?”

“Our toll device did not match the vehicle’s tag number.”

“Ohh, That sounds EZ…”