L.A. traffic as all of you know is an already existing havoc just like any other metro pole. You can never be sure of the traffic conditions you would face once you drive into the city, and to make matters worse, imagine someone fiddling with those traffic regulation devices.
Continuing on the above lines, Last august two transportation engineers were able to illegally access the electronic monitoring system which led to a disruption in traffic flows in four of the busiest intersections in the city.
The engineers used to work with the L.A.’s Automated Traffic Surveillance Center, a center for around 4,300 traffic signals across the greater L.A. area. The Duo Gabriel Murillo, 38, and Kartik Patel, 34 were able to alter the computer codes which led to failure of traffic signals at the intersections.
Both were ordered to stand trial for felony charges today, the charges comprise identity theft and disruption and denial of computer services as reported by the Los Angeles times, neither of them had any previous criminal records. The failure continued for four long days but luckily in those four days no accidents from the erroneous act took place.
The attorney for both of them claimed that the two weren’t having any information regarding the access privileges on the system they helped designing, as the codes were already changed. Also, they claim that both of them did all accidentally with no harm intended. Indeed, they tried to fix up the system once they became aware of the changes
[Source: Motorauthority]
