When I was a child the UK had a lot of Pelican crossings. A Pelican consists of almost normal red/amber/green lamps for motor traffic, plus cross/don't cross indications mounted on the same poles for pedestrians, you press a button, you stare at the red "Don't cross" symbol on the far side of the road, eventually the car signals change to red (stop) then yours change to green (cross) and you can cross the road. Sometimes these are independent, sometimes they're tied into a junction and follow a light sequence for the junction (in which case pressing the button may not appear to actually make any difference, especially at peak times)
Today though it has a lot more Puffin crossings. Superficially the Puffin is similar, but the Cross/ Don't Cross indication is physically mounted on your side of the road such that to stare at it you're looking towards oncoming motor traffic (in the UK this often, but not always, means facing right). This means now your awareness of that traffic happens as a natural consequence of checking for the indication it's safe to cross. If some lunatic has ignored the lights and is racing towards you anyway there's a better chance you notice as you see it go green.
As well as Pelican, and Puffin, and the widely known Zebra, there are also Toucan ("Two can cross" = bicycles as well as pedestrians) and Pegasus (The Pegasus is a mythical winged horse, these are for horse riders) crossings but the principle of these rarer alternatives is the same as for Puffin.