
One way to get what you want when it comes to contentious negotiations with your employer is to throw them into disarray and then go on strike. Or, it could net you a trial, and if you're lucky, a stay in the clink. Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel are going to trial on felony charges after they allegedly broke into a computer system and disrupted traffic flow at four of Los Angeles' most busy intersections. The reason for the discombobulation was an impending job action by the Engineers and Architects Association, according to prosecutors. The pair contend that their motive was not sabotage, but protection of the computer system that controls more than three thousand traffic lights. The city of Los Angeles had locked engineers out of the computer system in light of the impending strike, and Murillo's attorney asserts that his client merely took note of the changed settings and modified them back to what they were originally. Whatever the reason behind it, the traffic signal chaos took four days to set straight, although no accidents were attributed to the actions of the two engineers. They don't call it HelLA for nothing.










Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paul34 @ Oct 16th 2007 10:12AM
Engineers >> politicians
Jon @ Oct 16th 2007 10:30AM
Did they exploit the 'kick-ass' algorithm??
seoultrain @ Oct 16th 2007 10:51AM
ah you beat me. and with a funnier post.
seoultrain @ Oct 16th 2007 10:49AM
reminds me of italian job.
J.Crew @ Oct 16th 2007 11:25AM
That was my first thought too, just watched it again on Saturday. What a great movie.
Jason @ Oct 16th 2007 10:54AM
is that picture a piece of art?
Dazza @ Oct 16th 2007 11:49AM
The picture is a piece of art which I believe is at Canary Wharf in London.
Philometalist @ Oct 16th 2007 12:08PM
Bummer thought it was on a giant pole somewhere being held up by a million bolts and tension cables.
Robert Aitchison @ Oct 16th 2007 11:58AM
Heh my brother is a Transportation Engineer for the City of L.A. I just fired off an E-Mail to find out if he knows those guys.
SPG @ Oct 16th 2007 2:36PM
That's playing with peoples lives.
Literally.
Selfish, foolish, and irresponsible.
Nucbuddy @ Oct 17th 2007 2:38AM
This probably just ecouraged more people to telecommute, making the traffic engineers' jobs even-more redundant.
http://news.google.com/news?q=telecommuting
Matt @ Oct 16th 2007 5:27PM
So what exactly did they modify? Obviously they didn't change anything too serious, such as making all the lights green. I doubt thats even possible, theres gotta be failsafes against it. So what then? Just the timing of the lights?
obie @ Oct 16th 2007 7:00PM
yeah they just modified the amount of time the lights would stay red and green.
the adjustment had the red lights on for a couple mins longer and the green lights were extremely short.
it was in the newspaper the other day