Traffic countdowns may be pointless
The city has promised more pedestrian lights and more time to cross at intersections, but one of the ideas, the countdown light, may be a pointless expense, according to the study cited here.
The city has promised more pedestrian lights and more time to cross at intersections, but one of the ideas, the countdown light, may be a pointless expense, according to the study cited here.
Alex 09:29 on 2019-11-25 Permalink
I think one of the main problems with the pedestrian crossings here is a lack of clear signaling, (white pedestrian/flashing hand with timer/steady hand with a 0 on the timer), the ‘you need to hurry up’ is very similar to the ‘you should NOT be in the road now’ so you end up with people walking into the middle of the road when the pedestrian phase ends. We could also just do away with the countdown timer as it tells motorists how long they have left to stamp on the pedal before the light changes
dwgs 10:23 on 2019-11-25 Permalink
I have had a driver curse me out because I was still crossing when the flashing ‘don’t walk’ sign was on.
Kevin 11:08 on 2019-11-25 Permalink
My 2 cents: part of the issue is the lack of consistency among traffic lights. Sometimes you’ll get 6 seconds to finish crossing 4 lanes, sometimes you get 30 to cross 2 lanes.
Alex 13:10 on 2019-11-25 Permalink
In the certain countries they have systems that detect that users are on the Kerb/In the road and adjust the timings accordingly
JP 20:31 on 2019-11-26 Permalink
@dwgs I was reminded of your comment this afternoon when car after car wouldn’t stop at a yellow-striped crosswalk, where I had the right of way. I started walking when I saw that there seemed to be a safe enough distance from the next car that I could start walking and the driver would see me and slow down/stop…he didn’t stop. There was literally only a couple of inches between me and the front of his pick-up before I angrily pointed to the yellow stripes, and ran to the other side.
If there’s an initiative to make pedestrian crossing safer, there is going to have to be education and reinforcement for drivers on what those stripes mean among other things.
MarcG 07:08 on 2019-11-27 Permalink
I’ve been teaching my wife the rules of the road recently, since we’ve been driving a lot more than we want to and she’s never driven herself, and it’s amazing how few rights she thought she had as a predestrian based on the way drivers behave towards them. For example, she didn’t know that she had the right-of-way at a green light with no pedestrian signal because cars would always be trying to turn into her crosswalk while she was using it.