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Traffic Hack

Here’s an update, via the Los Angeles Times, on the case of the L.A. engineers — as alluded to in Traffic — charged in tampering with traffic signals as part of a labor action (in a reverse of The Italian Job, they wanted to slow traffic down):

Two L.A. traffic engineers who pleaded guilty to hacking into the city’s signal system and slowing traffic at key intersections as part of a labor protest have been sentenced to two years’ probation.

Authorities said that Gabriel Murillo, 40, and Kartik Patel, 37, hacked into the system in 2006 despite the city’s efforts to block access during a labor action.

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc, the city temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But authorities said Patel and Murillo found a way in and picked their targets with care — intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations.

The engineers programmed the signals so that red lights for several days starting Aug. 21, 2006 would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock. Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, at access onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center area, sources told The Times at the time. No accidents occurred as a result.

As part of their plea deal, the engineers agreed to pay $6,250 in restitution and completed 240 hours of community service.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 4:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Traffic Hack”

  1. Paul Johnson Says:
    December 3rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    And typical to Los Angeles, nobody thought to just walk…

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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