Why I always hit the crosswalk button (2015)
klittlepage.com
klittlepage.com
I recently visited Bellevue, WA and experienced one of the most anti-pedestrian "walking streets" I have ever encountered. Crosswalk buttons on a busy street full of shops and restaurants, yes, but even worse were the orange flags left out for pedestrians to grab and use like they are part-time crossing guards. No stop signs. No speed bumps. Just orange flags for the suckers walking instead of driving. To add insult to injury, the flags always ended up on one side of the street, making the entire project half-broken at best.
The worst part: this is their literal Main Street.
I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for this. If a car approaches a less-busy intersection it triggers the lights to cycle, but not immediately. I'm not sure why pedestrians would get such priority, rather being placed into the natural cycle.
FWIW I just came back from Thailand and it was rather eye opening - crosswalks are ignored by motorists, and there's much less hand-holding, but people manage to get by. There's more give-and-take rather than rigid rule following.
You might think so, until you look up the accident rates. https://www.roadsafetyfacility.org/country/thailand
This setup as I understand is preferred because it aligns with their modal priorities, and it is easier and more reliable to detect a heavy metal car than a person or a bicycle.
New York though... so often I'm crossing on green and there's some truck edging round the corner into my path, driver making eye contact, daring me to try to make him stop.
Keep the button, but for goodness sake stop letting cars drive through crosswalks in the "walk" phase.
I live in NY now and though the traffic laws are roughly the same, I almost never fear for my safety when crossing like I regularly did in SF.
While you’re asking for better pedestrian infrastructure, consider asking for protected bike lanes as well.
No right turns on red is a huge improvement. Don't the five boroughs have that?
It would be so much safer to do a pedestrian scramble. There aren’t a lot of pedestrians at this intersection, maybe one every 4-5 cycles, so it’s not going to slow traffic much if at all to have a 30-45second dedicated time where we can walk all the way across.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/11/27/a-pedestrian-...
I think that author likes to make up words, like "Stroad".
I regularly see 4+ year-olds sitting in a stroller playing phone games or just looking bored and disengaged, while the adult pushing the stroller otherwise completely ignores them, and it always makes me cringe.
One thing I've noticed, they don't walk very well while taking a nap. And you just get so much more out of a day when you don't have to return home in the middle.
There is a pretty big difference between using a stroller to help get a toddler (less than 5 years old) around and using it to pacify a 5 year old. In my experience, somewhere between 4 and 5 is when I expect them to be able to walk at a sufficient pace and distance to never need strollers.
Not Just Bikes popularized it (I think) https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM
It is a well accepted phrase too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
There are many references since the 2010s, but i also found references to it in a 1955 traffic engineering book: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sqh-alGvdoYC&q=%22pedest...
I don’t get the sense from “scramble” that the pedestrians would not know where they are going. Scramble can mean a sudden act of motion, like “they scrambled the jets” or “once we have stopped we all scrambled off the coach”.
There is an alternative meaning where it is used to signify that something is intentionally mixed up or even encrypted, such as “scrambled egg” or “can’t intercept their plans anymore, they scrambled the signal”. Maybe that is the meaning you are thinking about?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
You can ignore new terms if you wish, but it is useful for describing a common street pattern in North America. The term is increasingly being used by urban planners.
The only people who use that word are insufferable choads who want me to give up my car and live in a tiny apartment because of their misguided belief that if everyone lived like they do in Manhattan global warming would end and the world would be a Utopia
"Stroad" is a shibboleth that tells me you're someone with an opinion that is not worthwhile
Street example[1]: a road in a city or town that has buildings that are usually close together along one or both sides
Road example[2]: a long, hard surface built for vehicles to travel along
A street in this case is a type of road. A stroad is another type of road (where buildings are not “close together”, f.ex.)
1: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/street
Sounds like Naples
This goes for us in Canada too. I tell my kids to "be quick or be dead, but be safe". Probably kind of morbid, but an intersection is not a place to hang out.
Sarcasm?
And I say this as a pedestrian, I walk to work. And I am afraid of getting hit every day but for a different reason. The crosswalks are in the stupidest friggin spots, around a bend in the road, and cars are apparently allowed to park right up against the crosswalk so if even want a hope in hell of being seen you have to walk part way onto the road, and peak your head around the van that's blocking the view for both you and oncoming cars, and then hope they can see you around the bend in the road.
European here. What is the reason that this is allowed?
Although that's the same in Europe, if you turn right on green you usually have to be aware of a green pedestrian light that crosses the street you want to turn into.
The difference is that here in Austria walking is much more common and you usually get fined quickly if you take the right of way from a pedestrian
But Dutch traffic lights for cars also make clear whether or not this is an issue you need to watch out for; if the traffic light has an arrow pointing right, you're guaranteed to not be crossing pedestrians on green. If it's a solid circle, you need to watch out. My driving instructor paid a lot of attention to that.
And of course being South Africa you also have to watch out for the “stopped” cars, which are never quite stopped and actually edge forward while the driver is checking their phone and not watching if they’ll bump into a pedestrian crossing. When I used to run there I had to tap the bonnet/hood of cars multiple times to catch the attention of the driver because they were edging forward over the crossing while checking their phone.
That's not true - in Poland you get a green right turn arrow even on red, and you can legally drive over a crossing even when the pedestrians have a green light to cross. It is absolutely your responsibility to make sure that it is safe to do so.
https://www.gazelka.pl/blog/zielona-strzalka-warunkowego-skr...
I agree that the pedestrians should double-check in these sorts of situations, because the cemetery is full with people who have had the law on their side, but, nevertheless, it's primarily the drivers' responsibility to respect the law.
In aviation safety, it has long been established that, regardless of how clearly you establish who is responsible for what, if reality is such that people frequently can't actually carry out their responsibilities effectively, then you'll end up with disasters; disasters where you'll have someone to officially blame, but disasters nonetheless.
This is quite relevant to many pedestrian-car interactions. The problem with right turns over crossings where pedestrians have priority, is that in many situations, even if the driver is responsible for ensuring the turn is safe, it isn't possible for them to do so effectively. In many California right-on-red situations, for example, the driver is responsible both for ensuring that the road to their left is clear, and that the crossing to their right (and in front of them) is clear. Traffic, visibility, and speeds often mean that ensuring the road to the left is clear requires the driver to be looking far to their left until almost immediately before turning, and then accelerate quickly. At the same time, ensuring crossings are clear requires them to look both ahead and to their right, and similarly, visibility and layout often mean that the relevant portion of the crossing can go from being clear to blocked almost instantly, so the driver must be looking to their right immediately before turning. The two responsibilities conflict, and in order to turn, the driver must choose which risk to prioritize: if they prioritize checking for pedestrians, they'll increase the risk of a two-vehicle collision, and if they prioritize checking for vehicles, they'll increase the risk of hitting a pedestrian. Not turning is an option, but at least in California there would be considerable pressure culturally and from other drivers to do so, potentially to the level of threats and violence. It is not a good situation to put someone in.
The only time I have ever been hit by a car as a pedestrian was when I was very mildly hit by a driver turning right immediately after I stepped into a crossing. Legally, she was entirely at fault, but as I already felt the crossing was problematic, she was very apologetic, and I was entirely uninjured, we just didn't report it. And in hindsight, the intersection was just horrible. She couldn't see me because I was to her right and would have been obscured by trees and parked cars until immediately before entering the crossing; in order to avoid being hit by traffic, she needed to look to the left. While not legally my responsibility, in order to see her, I would have needed to look behind me before entering the intersection, but I also needed to watch carefully for cross traffic. In utterly bad design, despite heavy traffic and a 35mph speed limit, pedestrians always had legal right of way at the crossing, so she couldn't even have waited to have right of way.
No, it varies. Turning cars in Britain never go over 'walk' crossings, but they do in Denmark. It's something I check whenever I drive to a new country.
I think "right turn on red" should be banned first, as this leads to a car drive looking left to see if the road is clear, rather than looking right where pedestrians might be crossing.
I'm convinced that North America will only get its act together when gasoline reaches $9.00/gal. Only then will middle class folks start looking toward city living and only then will we get any appreciable progress in city life. I only hope that we reach that point BEFORE the climate catastrophe worsens beyond repair. The fracking boom doesn't have me very confident of this.
What if North America successfully moves from petrol-powered cars to electric ones, and autonomous vehicles get rolled out, and in the end the sprawling development and the reliance on vehicles remains just as entrenched?
I would actually defend right-on-red. Indeed, when I do drive, I get annoyed by all the "no turn on red" signs which slow things down.
In my estimation, the problem (locally, anyway) is cultural: drivers don't think to look, or else they feel entitled to turn first even if I'm crossing already and they think they can squeeze by faster. Convince these drivers to care about pedestrians, and to yield when legally required to, and you've solved the problem.
Can the car drive in these situations?
1. Right turn, red for car, green for pedestrian.
2. Right turn, green for car, green for pedestrian.
3. Right turn, green for car, red for pedestrian.
In USA, in some states the car driving in situation 1 is allowed (and naturally 2). I assume in most states 1 is not allowed and 2 is allowed.
In Europe, I assume driving the car in situation 1 is not allowed anywhere. 2 is mixed, some places have traffic lights that create this green for both, some don't.
3 is of course allowed everywhere in the world.
Funny thing is that situation 1 is now allowed for bicycle with the new M12 sign
Typically, at least here in Germany, a crossing cycles between two states:
* Cars can go north/south, pedestrians can cross the east and west roads
* Cars can go east/west, pedestrians can cross the north and south roads.
However, obviously cars don't just go north and south, sometimes they turn. To turn, the car naturally needs to slow down, and also typically be more aware of their surroundings. Theoretically, this means that they are a lot more likely to see, and be able to stop for, a pedestrian crossing the road as they turn.
The argument then goes that this group of cars is slow and aware enough that they can share a stretch of road with pedestrians (unlike fast cars traveling in a straight line, which must not share a stretch of road with pedestrians). Which means that you could allow pedestrians to cross if (and only if) the cars that they would intersect with are slow, turning cars. The advantage is that you go from three states in the cycle (cars N/S, cars E/W, all pedestrians) to two (cars N/S + pedestrians E/W, cars E/W + pedestrians N/S), which improves throughput because fewer people need to wait.
In practice, this works for relatively small junctions with one or possibly two lanes, but three+ lanes become more complicated and need more states to handle the cars going left and right from different directions. But there is a thought process here about trying to find the right balance between safety and efficiency. As someone from the UK, I'm not sure I'm a fan, but some of that might just be not being used to it.
But I may be wrong - statistics seem to agree with you.
If it's an arrow, cars have priority and don't have to worry about other traffic getting in their way. It's mostly for left turns (a green left arrow indicates that traffic coming in front has a red light) but it also works for pedestrians, a right arrow means that pedestrians and bicycles have red lights.
If it's a disc, then cars should pay attention to other traffic and observe regular priority rules, so stop for pedestrians and bicycles that likely have a green light at the same time as the cars do.
For pedestrians and bicycles, a green light basically means they always have priority and cars must stop for them wherever they come from.
I thought this was a weird statement for him to be allowed to make because a) he was a fact witness and that ain’t a fact and b) he was the officer who responded to the scene where he encountered a bicyclist trapped under a hummer… which was turning into a one way street as the bicyclist approached from the right.
(The cyclist won a shit-ton of money, of course).
"Turns on red are extremely dangerous to vulnerable road users: a 1980 Insurance Institute of Highway Safety study found that they increase pedestrian crashes by 60 percent, and bicycle crashes by 100 percent." [2]
[1] https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2021/11/04/lawsuit-flawed-...
[2] https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/06/15/guest-column-why-bos...
If the light is directional left/right, it means everyone else has a red light.
Technically, in most of the US, if a pedestrian looks like they're wanting to cross the street at a corner, that legally makes it a crosswalk whether it's marked as such or not (excepting for ones that have a sign indicating that there is no pedestrian crossing allowed). Failing to stop to allow the pedestrian to cross is an infraction and you can be ticketed for it.
Practically speaking, though, you're correct.
> that's in one of the more pedestrian friendly cities in the country, San Francisco.
Wait, what? San Francisco is considered a pedestrian-friendly city? That seriously boggles my mind. I mean, there are certainly cities that are worse, but there are also plenty of cities that are better.
I saw an accident in front of my eyes where this played out - a turning car mowed an elderly couple crossing slowly with the help of walking sticks. It was not pretty.
Perpetrators tend to be let off easily for cultural reasons. That's the real problem that needs to be addressed.
Drivers will respect pedestrians when the law is evenly enforced
They are. When you turn right on your green, the pedestrians have a green light. They have priority of course but then you are free to cross the crossing on their green.
I second this.
As a pedestrian it's pointless to have to wait when there were no other pedestrians crossing shortly before me and there won't be any shortly after me.
As a driver it's infuriating to have to stop at an empty crossing because the pedestrians eventually crossed during a short gap between the cars when they got tired waiting.
The advantage of this is that it's pretty easy to detect cars by detection loops in the road, and if you detect them in time, the car doesn't even have to slow down. Unless there are too many of them; then they will sometimes have to wait for pedestrians to cross.
I don't quite understand what the flags in Bellevue are for. Are there no traffic lights? But then what are the crosswalk buttons for?
It is a cheap non solution that allows leaders to say they did something without actually doing something that would require a sacrifice, such as money, or in the case, sacrificing the convenience of drivers who are presumably more politically powerfully than pedestrians.
The crosswalk buttons work, the traffic lights turn red, but that does not mean a driver will pay attention and check for pedestrians.
Right turns on red lights are allowed. As are left turns on greens, while the walk signal will simultaneously tell a person they can walk across the road. In both cases, the traffic light does not stop the driver, the driver has to be actively checking for a pedestrian.
All of this absurdity could be solved with a simple stop sign, but that would be a minor inconvenience to motorists.
Its a road after all
I hate it as much as you but thats the reality.
Also, unprotected left turns are just crazy dangerous.
For street crossings with multiple directions and multiple lights, that behavior makes sense. You’re waiting for the next pre-programmed phase that syncs you up with other parts of the crossing. For large roads it might make sense, you don’t want to interrupt the flow of the traffic that is expected to hit a green light down the road at current speed.
But for the lonely crossing light in front of the school building in a small street, why do I have to wait 20 seconds after pushing it, every single time?
Are you waiting 20 seconds for the cross light to turn amber or 20 seconds for your walk light to come on? Because the latter is always going to take at least ~10 seconds -- the stale green time + the amber time + all-red time.
In Amsterdam, every single intersection I encountered changed in less than 5 seconds, some almost immediately.
This is just a choice we make.
They're not traffic signals, though, they are a dozen or so strobing yellow lights. It's effectively a red light based on local law, but it's way more noticeable for approaching traffic.
Some crosswalks are configured to respect the button press, but in my experience the vast majority don't have any effect whatsoever.
There’s a pervasive myth about elevator buttons and crosswalk buttons being there as placebos. Yes, I’m certain there are instances where—when the traffic lights regularly cycle all day long—they might be placebo buttons, but the vast majority of them will at least lengthen the cycle time for your direction, and if appropriate will trigger a change sooner than it would have occurred otherwise.
I've timed it. It does nothing.
The elevator button thing is not a myth, it's actually quite common. As is crosswalk buttons that do nothing.
As far as crosswalks go: Yeah, on major intersections where light cycling is guaranteed to happen all day, the button may not accelerate the change. But that doesn't apply to "lonely crosswalks", and I bet that same button will work in the middle of the night if the cross-street happens to die off during those hours. I caveated that in my comment.
There is no cool-down period on how frequently it can trigger, and there is no platooning, so at the end of the day when everyone is going home, intermittent pedestrian traffic, say, one person every 20 seconds, is enough to back traffic up all the way to the end of the canyon.
A simple bit of platooning, or a traffic detector (loops aren't good in the canyons, plows rip em up, so probably a radar based approach), would solve this, for this case at least
So traffic engineers by default set crossing buttons to have a delay so the poor motorists aren't somehow inconvenienced by a person wanting to cross.
Note that I'm not referring to lights where pushing the button inserts a crosswalk cycle into the next light change. I'm talking about single street crossings where you push the button and nothing happens for anywhere from 30 seconds to minutes.
The ones in my part of the US do this when the traffic is light or nonexistent, but only with the streets that have car sensors embedded in them.
I think they're mainly a UK/Ireland thing, which confused the hell out of me when I went to continental europe and saw the same road markings paired with actual traffic lights + button. (here, that'd be a "pelican crossing" and have different road markings)
The versions that I hate are where there are always flashing yellow lights at those whether there is a pedestrian present or not. It is confusing and teaches people to ignore the flashing light as it is meaningless. I prefer the kind where a pedestrian presses a button and the lights flash to tell the cars to stop.
They do exactly what you're proposing here in the UK (at least, the ones that have been recently upgraded in the town I live do) - if there's no cars around it'll instantly cycle the road lights to red (via amber) and then the pedestrian crossing goes green. Pretty much inside the 3 seconds requested too.
Even the ones with multiple directions. No cars? Ped can go as soon as the road lights are red.
The traffic light system before these upgrades was locked into the same cycle you describe - pressing the button would just add a "pedestrians can go now" phase into the normal light pattern.
Having said all that if there's no cars around I'll just cross the road without interacting with the traffic lights at all lol
There's a particularly bad one at a busy foot and cycle path near me. It takes a minute to cross after pressing at all times. I know it's done to ease congestion on the busy road but that's wrong. Congestion should be allowed but only the participants (car users) subjected to it. Otherwise it's just making cars more enjoyable at everyone else's expense.
I usually encounter this when a line of cars go through their green and I dash across behind them quick enough for it to unset and not disrupt the normal light cycles. It's a daft little thing but it feels so darn efficient to get across without interrupting traffic, haha
Sometimes Occam's razor[0] provides a satisfactory explanation:
Traffic engineers have to take into account people pressing a request button at an arbitrary point in time, or with high frequency, which can cause significant negative impact to traffic flow if a minimum is not enforced.
While a person, or relatively small set of people, seeking to cross a street is made to wait, the numerous people driving are kept moving such that traffic back pressure can be minimized.
This approach would not satisfy the very real use-case scenario of pedestrians pressing the request button whilst having no intention to cross.
By having a "request -> delay -> satisfy" workflow, instead of a "request -> satisfy -> delay" one, traffic engineers can at least minimize the impact of random jerks.
I did, for the purpose of presenting a context to try to explore the original question:
>> Seems a good place to ask a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time, and couldn’t figure out the answer to: why do lonely crosswalks not immediately turn the lights red for the cars when you push the button? Or at least, after a very short delay (< 3 seconds).
Just because a pedestrian desires to reach their destination by crossing a road does not negate the desires of those driving to reach their destinations. Neither desire is more important than the other and a legitimate case can be made for slightly prioritizing drivers due to the volume of people involved.
> ... the designer has to deliberately forget that you can put the delay after the cycle.
That choice would prioritize one person, or at most a few, over those in vehicles having the same desire. Plus, it does not factor in impact with regard to other traffic control devices (a.k.a. "stop lights").
I guess the fundamental question is; does the want of one person outweigh those of others if that "one person" happens to be you?
I disagree.
The flow of cars is (roughly) continuous, and the button presses are (roughly) randomly timed. Adding a delay to the button does not affect the experience of the cars. They still see a randomly timed red light. Even if there was an hour-long delay (with multiple pushes in flight), that wouldn't prioritize cars in any meaningful way. They'd still see the light change every 2-10 minutes or whatever it is, and whether they are caught by the light will still be random.
So it might as well change right away.
In a place I used to live there was an very low traffic intersection on a road between my office and my home where the light was misprogrammed or had a bad trigger and would consistently take many minutes before switching to one direction (the direction between my home and office). But hitting the crosswalk to cross the perpendicular road would make it turn green (and the always-green direction red) in seconds. I believe the button instantly set the light to yellow, so the only delay was the yellow time.
So if my partner was with me she'd always hop out and hit the button. :P
Of course, perhaps discouraging that behavior is a reason they aren't usually fast like that. :)
You don't have to, just cross the street and ignore the "criminalisation" of said basic action (i.e. crossing an empty street) as "jay-walking".
I can say it's very interesting to see what people from several places consider common on this thread. Most traffic laws seem to be absolutely insane; I wonder insanity there are on my local laws that I'm too used to notice.
Even in a place like California where pedestrians supposedly have the right-of-way, it would encourage more walking if we try not to make it an inconvenience.
This is a popular myth spread by the media because it fitted the Lord Of The Flies-type view of humanity that was popular at the time. It's completely false, however. Most of those 37 bystanders weren't watching at all and had no idea what was going on. The few that did notice what was going on tried to chase away the attacker, call the police, or help Kitty.
That doesn't necessarily mean the bystander effect itself is incorrect; I remember a much more recent event where dozens of people watched while someone drowned. But the murder of Kitty Genovese is not a good example of it, and the effect is clearly a lot more complicated than it's often presented, because there are also many examples where a large crowd does help, sometimes at significant risk to themselves.
It's a well documented thing that people are unable to recognize drowning.
Notice all the people in these videos oblivious to the drowning people nearby.
downsides:
- inconvenience (like if my hands are in my pocket)
- exposure to illness transmission via increased contact with unknown but certainly dirty surface area (assuming touch is required)
- energy expenditure (if its not immediately next to you, or you have a disability)
Sincerely, you might be on to something here.
You're going to touch traces of a million other people's gender fluids on every single other thing you touch during your errand. Germophobia is very selective.
Are your fingers OK?
:)
In Australia, they all do have big buttons.
This works fine 99% of the time. However, sometimes my wife will be there. She never presses the button (because she’s ADHD and always forgets), but stands nice and close. A pile of pedestrians will mill around, the lights will change, and the walk signal will stay red! Someone will then annoyedly step in and press the button approximately 20 times while everyone waits for another light cycle to complete.
Her other trick is to enter an elevator and press no buttons. Eventually the lift will go somewhere, but she is often surprised at the destination!
Also, my wife is the same.
- Please press
- Wait for green
At least that's the way it is here in NZ, and when I've been in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane I haven't obviously noticed a general difference to here in NZ (there are particular crossings that are sometimes a bit different, i.e. you never need to press, but)...
Feedback would obviously solve (or at least alleviate) the problem I mentioned. It would, however, be much less amusing.
[0]: https://theconversation.com/sublime-design-the-pb-5-pedestri...
However others have no indicator or sound. To make things even more confusing is the pedestrian crossings can also be programmed to happen automatically at peak times with no button press, but absolutely need a button press outside of peak hour.
Yeah, it's not much. In any other circumstance I press the dang button.
I still will hit the yellow bit, but I'm not sure if I need to, or if they are totally automated*. There is absolutely zero feedback, not even the feedback of pushing a button.
British road-crossings often will illuminate a 'WAIT' message on the box when the button has been pressed, which is some great feedback.
(* there is a rotating part on the bottom which gives partially sighted people an indication that the lights are green).
Some in the US (maybe when I was in DC?) will audibly say "WAIT" from when they're pressed until you can cross, sometimes also counting the time remaining out loud after you get the signal, too.
I prefer the version of it I encountered in Hong Kong; there is a rapid clip of clicks at green, followed by a slower click when flashing red, and then a slow click at red. It's more universal and language-agnostic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnWRQ9yVFYg&t=13s
The sounds are highly directed so you can't hear, say, the crosswalk perpendicular to you, let alone hear it from surrounding buildings.
Unless you are deaf, then you get no feedback. There are buttons near me that don't always trigger when I touch them, but I know to listen for the feedback. (these are touch, not push buttons) Of course they are not universal, there are a lot of buttons around me that give no feedback at all.
In any case the buttons often vibrate specifically so that deaf people can feel it.
The person you've constructed in this scenario is both blind and deaf. Such an unattended person is in extreme danger on streets with automobile traffic no matter what the crosswalk button does.
I agree that not all disabilities can be accounted for. However the more we account for the better - where accounting is all aspects of getting around. I don't know how to make it safe for a blind and deaf person to navigate streets safely - but I wish it was possible and as soon as I learn of something that works I'll support it.
At some point, a disability requires assistance. That is less true these days than in the past but still a last option.
It’s a simple button that clicks, and under the panel there’s a small knob that rotates. Click the button, then place your fingers on the knob and wait for it to start spinning. I can’t tell you if the crossing call button is completely broken (although you’ll figure that out if wait long enough), but broken call buttons in the UK are pretty rare, I’ve only encountered a small handful of broken buttons over 20 years.
I am most used to these ones specifically: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/ECW0FA/pedestrian-crossing-traffic...
Can be activated with your elbow, the thing beeps and the bottom lights up when you activate it.
Slow clicks help deaf users locate the button; fast clicks mean it's safe to cross; silence means you shouldn't enter the crossing because there's not enough time left.
[0] See https://theconversation.com/sublime-design-the-pb-5-pedestri...: I have a possibly excessive national pride in how good a button it is
I absolutely detest the lip variant. It makes it impossible to slap the button with an open palm, requiring an actual push instead. Particularly with the pandemic, they were near impossible to activate with an elbow. So close to perfection and yet so far…
That said I now have to deal with the terrible British ones, and the attached signals that are supposedly safer - they’re on the same device as the button, supposedly forcing you to look at them and face the traffic. In practise, the inconsistency of whether there’s a crossing indicator on the other side of the road or not means I rely solely on sound cues.
If everyone can just adopt the PB/5, even with the atrocious lip, the world will be a better place.
WAIT…WAIT… WAI-WA-WAITWAITWAIT…
…CROSS SIGNAL IS ON…
BEEP… BEEP… BEEP… BEEP
The other one, with the hand symbol, means you only need to hover your hand near it and it registers your intent. No touch necessary.
For all the hate the bureaucracy and infrastructure in Berlin gets, the design of it at least does have some thought put into it.
They also don't vibrate or give any auditory signal (except when the actual green walk signal comes)... I'm not sure how a blind person could use it because their sensitivity is so low that you have to keep touching, pressing, smacking the touch surface until it registers you and updates the (purely visual) signal on the other side. I ended up just crossing illegally at one crosswalk because the damn thing just wouldn't work.
If they don't have the three dots in the circle they usually do control the lights. Newer models also show a red light on the side of the button when pressed, similar to the UK lights just more subtle. But there are also plenty of old buttons around that don't.
IIRC if it has three dots, it's for accessibility only - you don't need to press it.
If it has the vague hand symbol, it will probably light up when you "tap" it, but may not actually do anything you notice - one near us it doesn't speed up the light, it just makes it last longer. But for others it might also be necessary to tap it to make the light change!
Only thanks to Covid and not wanting to touch things did I find out it did nothing
In other countries I find the lack of feedback quite frustrating.
(took me a long time to figure that out)
In the end, it is a like a secret button only the locals know about :)
If a driver sees me walking in the crosswalk and notices that our paths will intersect, he speeds up.
Everyone does it and everyone accepts the behavior —- it has become so ingrained within driving culture that no one questions how insane it is to try to speed past a guy pushing a stroller to shave six seconds off of a trip.
Of course, people respond to incentives, so we shouldn’t blame individuals for operating within the constraints they inherited. Traffic calming is the way to fix this problem but as long as we as a culture never ask drivers to make trade offs for pedestrians, we will always be stuck driving everywhere and forcing people to ask permission to cross the road.
The problem with the button is this - too many intersections are built for cars and not people. The car is there “by default” and the pedestrian must ask permission to enter their realm. If there is a place which requires pedestrians to ask permission to enter a road which is dominated by fast moving cars…something has gone very wrong.
It's a weird experience reading this about something I've never done nor really observed very often. People speed up when they see a pedestrian in a crosswalk? I see people stopping for pedestrians all the time. Sometimes cars will stop for me when I wish they wouldn't: just keep going, you were fine, I'm still like 5 seconds away from your path.
> The car is there “by default” and the pedestrian must ask permission to enter their realm
That's such a weirdly negative way of looking at the world. Dozens to hundreds of cars pass per minute and fewer than one pedestrian does (on average), so the pedestrian notifies the intersection that they're there. You'd rather every single light cycle assume pedestrians are crossing, even when 95% of the time they're not? You'd like to waste every driver's time to make some point about society?
There are plenty of intersections where a very minor road crosses a main road. When cars come to the intersection on the minor road, they "hit the button" by driving over the sensor, and the intersection knows they're there. Are they the poor pathetic outsiders "asking for permission" to "enter the realm" of the major street? I guess you could look at it that way if you wanted to be angry all the time. It's just simple optimization to make as many people as happy as possible. Just hit the damn walk button; it's fine.
Yes, many drivers try to be courteous.
But many others are drag racing at 75 mph on a 35 mph road while I try to walk across with my child in the middle of the afternoon - an anecdote which is not exaggerated at all.
(That said, I’m certainly not angry at you…just the system.)
But I don’t want to waste all of societies time waiting at pointless walk stoppages…that would be absurd and it wasn’t my point.
I believe that walk buttons are a symptom of a problem - specifically that there are lots of places which try to mix pedestrians and cars and end up being worse for both.
In my mind, we need more roads specifically dedicated to _only_ cars which offer no possibility of encountering a pedestrian at all. Interstates have no crossing buttons.
And at the same time, we need more spaces which are designed to let cars pass slowly through them, where people tend to walk, bike, scooter, and crawl. These spaces need no crossing buttons either.
We can do so much better as a culture.
These people drive with speed right up the stop sign, don't turn their blinkers on, and then with 40% probability, turn anyway. So whenever I get to that intersection, if I see a car approaching there, even if they don't have their blinker on to indicate they might want to turn where I want to walk, I wait to make sure they come to a complete stop before I enter the intersection. Sometimes the buggers will just start turning slowly into the intersection as I'm still walking. It's extra great when they start blocking cars going the other way.
Shortly after moving to Mountain View I was walking home from work and distracted thinking about a technical problem, I managed to walk right in front of a car that had the green. They stopped and apologized to me! (I assume they were also somewhat distracted and thought they were at fault...) Very different experience from the east coast.
I don't recall anyone in norcal speeding up towards pedestrians. And on bikes at unprotected crossings and in merging cars I've experienced the opposite problem where everyone slows down, spacing out traffic to optimally make it so you don't get a break long enough to allow crossing.
I think that has contributed to an especially bad micro-culture around a few blocks where people just get used to weaving their car in between rather annoying pedestrians.
I’ll never forget one day when I was in Sweden trying to cross a road. A driver stopped for me to cross and I was so surprised it actually changed what I expect of myself when near pedestrians.
I've lived in the US all my life and I don't recall seeing this even once.
On the other hand, the thing I experience that infuriates me is when the walk sign comes on so I start to step off the curb to cross and a car making a right turn at my corner of the intersection doesn't even pretend to check for pedestrians and comes barreling through the corner because they were trying to beat the red light.
Most of the time they see me at the last second and stop before running me over. I make a point of quickly stepping back on to curb and giving them a death stare before I continue.
Sometimes they don't see me and barrel through the corner. If I don't step back, I would get run over. Infuriating.
In some places the pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way (cars going 40-50 mph will stop for pedestrian crossing). In other places, cars slowly force their way into a full crosswalk.
Yes, it's cultural. But it's different everywhere in the US.
This article cites the murder of Kitty Genovese as an example of the bystander effect / volunteer's dilemma. More recent research, including a documentary by Kitty's brother who interviews witnesses (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3568002/), has shown that the police report and subsequent newspaper reporting of 37 witnesses doing nothing is completely wrong. See https://www.npr.org/2014/03/03/284002294/what-really-happene... and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/10/a-call-for-hel... .
The New York Times has updated their original article acknowledging it's incorrect (https://web.archive.org/web/20181108183955/https://www.nytim...)
"A.M. Rosenthal, who went on to become executive editor of The Times, stands by the article he assigned to Mr. Gansberg 40 years ago, right down to the word ''watched'' in its opening sentence. This questioning of details, he said, is to be expected.
''In a story that gets a lot of attention, there's always somebody who's saying, 'Well, that's not really what it's supposed to be,''' said Mr. Rosenthal, who is retired from The Times and now writes a column for The Daily News. There may have been minor inaccuracies, he allows, but none that alter the story's essential meaning. ''There may have been 38, there may have been 39,'' he said, ''but the whole picture, as I saw it, was very affecting.''"
Does that sound like "completely wrong" to you?
So yes
Sounds like lies to me.
That seems fair, though? That's a pretty long crossing if you include the sidewalk in the grassy area as part of one continuous crossing. If it were a median, I'd agree with you, but that's almost a small park. Just plain grass, it could use some shrubs & trees, but still.
The parking spots were probably just opportunistic use of the extra space. They seem have been removed, if you look on street view. The satellite view is from 2019 or before, but some of the street views are 2020 and 2021 and show that they've removed the parking and added road capacity.
It could still be a, “hey, press the button” light. Or it could be a “button already pressed” light
>Reverse traffic lights are a system that provides priority to pedestrians, as the green signal is permanently displayed for them to cross. Instead of the pedestrian having to stop, press and wait, it is the drivers who must ‘request’ permission to pass through.
..... CTRL F5
Elacceleration: hitting the elevator call button repeatedly to make the elevator arrive faster.
(They do in the UK, and often (I think not always) a little spinning knob underneath for the blind.)
Note that I said lights - plural. People should cross diagonally across the intersection if that is where their direction takes them.
The crosswalk button scenario is therefore not comparable; there's no cost (to the button-pusher) in pressing the button, even if they aren't planning to cross at all.
It rudely makes cars stop and wait while also giving drivers nothing to do other than stare at me.
It’s much easier and less aita (reddit reference) to just cross against traffic when light to nil. And I’d rather live dangerously.
However, not recommended if you are prone to tripping or fainting, or at night, or if there is a certain level of traffic. ymmv depending on locale.
Why don't you consider it rude to make the people walking stop?
Waiting a couple of seconds is the exception and you would have to wait that long for the light to change.
So it is not making the people walking stop, if you think about it.
Our cities have way over optimized for traffic flow of cars.
Edit: Also, I think crosswalks should be signalized away from intersections with level crossing and dedicated walking paths separate from road noise/pollution. Making people cross at an intersection is way too dangerous.
Meanwhile, I have not seen this behavior anywhere else in the city where it would make sense. Instead, we have almost all crosswalk buttons that do nothing, a few that turn on a light so drivers can know you want to cross (they won't stop, but they'll know), and a few where you will never have a walk signal unless you hit the button, but the light timing does not change. I have watched plenty of tourists helplessly trapped at an intersection not knowing why it never changes.
0: trains which cannot stop 1: emergency vehicles working a current emergency (when an emergency is not in progress they are 5) 2: pedestrians on foot (including manual wheelchairs) 3: buses in a bus-only lane 4: bicycles and other human powered wheeled transport (ebike count only if most power comes from humans). This includes electric wheelchairs. 5: everything else. Including buses in mixed traffic (which should only be done when traffic is so light that it doesn't matter)
This encourages the type of transport you want people to use in your city.
Suburban intersections really need them and I wouldn't consider them 'the most remote' ... the intersections are large enough that most people can't or won't cross on a minimum length green, so the button lengthens the green time. Additionally, traffic patterns vary, and waiting for a car to trigger the occupancy signal might be a longer wait, and anyway to encourage pedestrianism (false positives from people jumping out of cars isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of things either), the beg button often reduces cycle times to minimums until the pedestrian can cross. The alternative of including pedestrians in all cycles by default is a waste of everyone's time, including pedestrians, given the low pedestrian usage.
Maybe if there was a good way to measure pedestrians on approach and intersection entrance, you could do the same thing you do for cars, and cycle in advance of their arrival and confirm they cleared the intersection before cycling further, but that's asking for a lot.
In remote intersections, you only really need a button if there's significant traffic. Otherwise, crossing whenever there's a clearing is probably better, IMHO. But a button for slow crossers isn't a bad idea.
That's only safe if there are a reasonable number of lanes, namely no more than 2. Beyond that the width is higher, the possibility of a car far away blocking the view of another car slightly behind increases and the driving speed of the cars is increased because it feels safe enough for them. And from what I've seen in the West Coast, narrow human-sized roads are reserved exclusively for back alleys.
The world will be fair when drivers have to get out of their cars and push a button to get a green light, while pedestrians automatically get a walk signal every cycle.
After 50 years of that it'll be even, and we can go to a system where everyone gets their turn automatically.
The only unambiguous win (I think) would be for the light to change immediately when you press the button, with the throttling delay afterwards, as a few others have said in this thread.
I wish I knew whether traffic signal designers intentionally don't use that design, or whether it simply doesn't occur to them. (Or is there some downside to that design?)
The history of such laws are interesting, by the way.
That said, most of the time and in most places I've been, the de facto reality is that it's essentially lawless. Neither pedestrians nor drivers are being policed effectively and they all kind of do whatever.
Since you're comfortable asking pedestrians to jaywalk across the street if it looks clear, maybe you should also get comfortable with simply running the red lights on these quiet roads, since nothing is coming. At least in your case, you have a giant machine with airbags to protect you if you make a mistake.
According to the rest of his comment, most of them are jaywalking:
> Most of the time they then cross immediately and the traffic light will go red some time after they have already crossed
I.e., they come to the intersection, hit the crosswalk button, and then jaywalk across instead of waiting for the signal to change. The signal then actually changes after they are across.
I do not have a car. It is while walking that I am affected by the behaviour.