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Why I always hit the crosswalk button (2015)
- jwozn 3y agoCan't just hit it once - have to a few times just to make sure.
- ochronus 3y agoF5 F5 F5 F5 :)
- Arrath 3y agoStill nothing? ..... CTRL F5
- JohnFen 3y agoIf you're old enough to remember "sniglets", here's one that's elevator-specific but there should be a crosswalk equivalent of: Elacceleration: hitting the elevator call button repeatedly to make the elevator arrive faster.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoOne of the buttons near us makes a particularly funny sound when you hit it. It's a fun little reward, though an unintentional one.
- HaZeust 3y agoIn my current area (Denver) and my former place of living (Baltimore), they yell "WAIT!" at you :D
- gyf304 3y agoThe crosswalk button my city uses has an LED that illuminates if the button was pressed before. It’s a great UX improvement over the ones without the LED.
- IshKebab 3y agoAh, that's pretty important context that is missing from the article! These have been universal in the UK for as long as I can remember.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoyes I've noticed them in my city getting much better, they light up and say "wait" when you press them... newer ones are even becoming contactless so you can wave your hand in front of them
- kqr 3y agoI never remember if the light means "button pressed" or "here is the button come press it" like on a taxi.
- madeofpalk 3y agoYou don't just press the button and see what happens?
- function_seven 3y agoIf the indicator light is on, the OP presses the button, and that same indicator light remains illuminated: What did we learn? It could still be a, “hey, press the button” light. Or it could be a “button already pressed” light
- mayneack 3y agoThat's true if you only ever press one light. You can still learn the pattern in a given area with experimentation (assuming most lights work the same). I know, for example, that lights in LA indicate that it's already pressed, but would have to experiment in a new city.
- whywhywouldyou 3y agoThat's the point. Adding the LED does very little to help the user understand the state. In the end, you'll just push the button anyway to make sure.
- daveliepmann 3y agoBeg buttons are the worst. Traffic engineers who design them into any but the most remote intersections should be ashamed of themselves. One more piece of obscene car culture and dependence.
- foxyv 3y agoThe only Beg Button I think is worth a flying fig is one that interrupts the cycle. Pedestrians and cyclists should be first class road users. When they push the button it should immediately interrupt the car traffic by cycling to yellow/red and allow the pedestrians to cross. I've spent as much as ten minutes at some intersections waiting to cross and then had to dodge right on red cars and people trying to beat the light. It's absolutely absurd. 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.
- gs17 3y agoThe crosswalk buttons around me are a frustrating mess. I used to live on a street where the intersection to the main road had a sensor that either couldn't detect my car or just didn't work at all. The only way to get a green light was to have someone get out and hit the crosswalk button, which quickly changes the flow of car traffic. 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.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoI’ve seen a bus driver get out of the bus, run across the road, and press a crosswalk button to get a light to cycle quicker.
- NeoTar 3y agoI kinda hate the buttons here in Berlin - a lot of them look like this: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2AEHF8N/traffic-light-switch-for-pedestrian-crossing-and-blurred-car-lights-in-berlin-2AEHF8N.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2AEHF8N/traffic-light-switch-for-p... 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).
- gs17 3y ago>British road-crossings often will illuminate a 'WAIT' 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.
- bobthepanda 3y agoThis is, I believe, an accessibility feature. 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 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.
- bluGill 3y ago> This is, I believe, an accessibility feature. 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.
- userabchn 3y agoIt irritates me when people press the crosswalk button on quiet roads (where most of the time there is nothing coming, so you can just cross) before they have even looked to see if anything is coming. Most of the time they then cross immediately and the traffic light will go red some time after they have already crossed, holding up both cars and pedestrians coming behind (who might get there shortly before the traffic light goes green again, so have to wait for that and then wait for the accumulated traffic to clear before they can cross). There is a walking route near me that crosses a lot of roads and I not infrequently get caught behind someone doing this so I get stuck at every crossing.
- drawkward 3y ago[flagged]
- zenbowman 3y agoSame. Slowing down traffic is an inherent good, whether or not you have any intention of crossing.
- dexterdog 3y ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 3y ago[flagged]
- organsnyder 3y agoMany drivers in the United States rarely—if ever—use walking as anything other than for getting from their vehicle to their destination.
- tom_ 3y ago[flagged]
- hateful 3y agoThere's a light in a village by me that won't give the walk signal unless someone hits the button, but instead will let cars turn. Last weekend when I went up to this light (as a pedestrian), there were two other pedestrians waiting. I had (wrongly) assumed that they had hit the button. But we waited two light rotations and I heard them complain about it not letting them cross. Then I hit the button myself and the next rotation it let us cross.
- mehlmao 3y ago> When a stranger murdered Kitty Genovese outside of her Brooklyn apartment while thirty seven bystanders watched without so much as calling the police, the Volunteer's Dilemma went mainstream 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/ 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-happened-the-night-kitty-genovese-was-murdered https://www.npr.org/2014/03/03/284002294/what-really-happene... and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/10/a-call-for-help 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.nytimes.com/1964/03/27/archives/37-who-saw-murder-didnt-call-the-police-apathy-at-stabbing-of.html https://web.archive.org/web/20181108183955/https://www.nytim...)
- rufus_foreman 3y agoFrom the New York Times update link: "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?
- bluGill 3y agoThese buttons should be supplemented with a camera that detects humans coming and changes the lights as they get close to the intersection. Note that I said lights - plural. People should cross diagonally across the intersection if that is where their direction takes them.
- yakubin 3y agoAnother instance of pedestrian congestion that’s really jarring to me are serial pedestrian crossings on roads with opposing traffic lanes separated by pavement, often on intersections. It may look like this: <https://maps.app.goo.gl/ErBFC2oXV21oQ9U7A https://maps.app.goo.gl/ErBFC2oXV21oQ9U7A>. For some reason, the traffic lights are programmed in such a way that most of the time you need to be almost running (I’d say something like 8-10 km/h) to ever have a chance of crossing both crossings in one go, even when you start walking at the beginning of the green light. Instead you’re almost always (the durations change throughout the day) guaranteed to stop before the second light and have fun breathing in the fumes from a high-traffic road. I can’t think of it as anything but hostile to pedestrians.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> https://maps.app.goo.gl/ErBFC2oXV21oQ9U7A https://maps.app.goo.gl/ErBFC2oXV21oQ9U7A 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.
- stefan_ 3y agoThere is nothing there? It connects to nothing? There is no reason to be there and no pedestrian wants to be there. It exists purely to facilitate this absurdly overbuilt intersection (and bizarrely, a bunch of parking spots).
- rootusrootus 3y agoIt looks like they created a sort-of-roundabout-ish traffic pattern with the intersection, which is why it is so large. I assume it is a fairly busy location? 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.
- w-m 3y agoSeems 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). 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?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 3y agoI've experienced this behaviour. During the middle of the day at an intersection of a side street with a busy street it can take a long time to turn. At night when the busy street isn't so busy, it seems to often turn relatively quickly. 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.
- w-m 3y agoWaiting for amber takes 20 seconds. Also it’s not a timeout of some case from repeated use. Have to wait even if it wasn’t used for several minutes beforehand.
- hunter-2 3y ago> Waiting for amber takes 20 seconds. Also it’s not a timeout of some case from repeated use. Have to wait even if it wasn’t used for several minutes beforehand.
- dublinben 3y ago
- denton-scratch 3y agoTFA explains the cost of phoning the cops on Kitty as being paperwork hassle. 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.
- fhub 3y agoThere is an intersection near Disneyland that always has pedestrians on one of the crossings (S Harbor Blvd and W Katella Ave). They should remove the buttons. I think I stood there through two cycles before I worked my way through the crowd to push the button. On the flip side it gets you in the right mood for waiting in lines all day...
- dkarras 3y agoI always hit it because pressing it is practically free, yet in the case that it needs pressing, the punishment for not pressing it is high (extended, possibly infinite wait). maybe it is not connected to anything, maybe someone else already pressed it, I don't care because I don't have that information and pressing it is free so I can't lose anything by pressing it, but can lose by not pressing it.
- cleansingfire 3y agoThe button has no downside, with a possible benefit, so always push it. Also refers to discredited Bystander effect nonsense regarding Kitty Genocese murder: "there is no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive." https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.62.6.555 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.6...
- purplecats 3y ago> The button has no downside 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)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SlickNixon 3y ago>an angst that could otherwise be channeled more appropriately Sincerely, you might be on to something here.
- WheatMillington 3y agoThis post is a reach and a half.
- jstarfish 3y agoYou had to turn a doorknob to leave the house, but you're too disabled to push a fucking button designed for handicapped UX? 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.
- NiloCK 3y agoAmazing you managed to write this post or read any of the comments. Are your fingers OK? :)
- standardUser 3y agoCrosswalks in busy areas shouldn't have buttons and should allow pedestrian crossings automatically as part of the cycle. In less dense areas, buttons should change the light more or less immediately to allow pedestrian crossing. Neither of these scenarios are usually the case since these intersections are almost always designed with cars as the paramount concern and pedestrians as an afterthought. 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.
- strangesmells06 3y agoI kind of think cars should be the paramount concern. Its a road after all
- snthd 3y agoRoads were not built for cars.
- wsve 3y agoWell, historically yes, but this has stopped being true for the past ~80 years
- strangesmells06 3y agoThe entire United States was designed for cars, commuting, freight, and trucking. I hate it as much as you but thats the reality.
- WheatMillington 3y ago>In less dense areas, buttons should change the light more or less immediately to allow pedestrian crossing. 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.
- OJFord 3y agoDo they not have lights to indicate that they've been pressed (but not yet green for pedestrians) in the US then? (They do in the UK, and often (I think not always) a little spinning knob underneath for the blind.)
- gnicholas 3y agoThese are rolling out in the US.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fortran77 3y agoKitty Genovese case was more complicated than what was described in this post. See https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/a-new-look-at-the-killing-of-kitty-genovese-the-science-of-false-confessions.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/o...
- natch 3y agoI never hit the button unless absolutely necessary. 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.
- daveliepmann 3y ago>It rudely makes cars stop Why don't you consider it rude to make the people walking stop?
- Ekaros 3y agoSaving the planet. Pedestrians use lot less fuel or energy to accelerate and deaccelerate. As such it is best in fight against climate change to not force them to stop.
- natch 3y agoI don’t think it’s better to make 3,000 lbs of metal stop and start again.
- natch 3y agoBecause generally speaking in the safe situations I mentioned pedestrians can usually simply cross without breaking stride. 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.
- nerdbert 3y agoI always hit all crosswalk buttons, even if I'm not crossing, because it's nonsense that pedestrians have to ask permission to cross the street while the lights always change for drivers. 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.
- iainmerrick 3y agoI agree with you in principle, but pressing the button eagerly like that can have downsides. You press the button, the pedestrian light goes green, then somebody walking 100 meters behind you who actually wants to cross just misses the light and has to wait longer. 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?)
- iambateman 3y agoThe problem with crosswalks in North America is primarily cultural… 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.
- feoren 3y ago> 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'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.
- gnicholas 3y agoSome buttons have a little LED in the middle, which is lit after it's been pressed. That way you know if you need to press it or not.
- fumeux_fume 3y agoOnly took a couple paragraphs in to make me realize this is one of the dumbest posts I've read on HN all year. At least I enjoyed reading people vent about the dismal state of pedestrian rights in the comments!
- aussieguy1234 3y agoPerhaps the button could be turned into a fake button that does nothing, then the crossings should be automated based on actual data of pedestrian traffic. There's fake/placebo buttons all around us anyway, so the users won't know any difference.
- arcatan 3y agoI always hit the button because I like the beep they make
- darkteflon 3y agoI feel like the relationship between cars, pedestrians and space in cities is one of those “boiling-frog” situations, where over time we’ve become habituated to something that would compel any un-inured outsider to ask: “Are you fucken insane?”
- mcv 3y ago> When a stranger murdered Kitty Genovese outside of her Brooklyn apartment while thirty seven bystanders watched without so much as calling the police, 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.
- marcosdumay 3y ago> dozens of people watched while someone drowned It's a well documented thing that people are unable to recognize drowning.
- inoffensivename 3y agohttp://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ Notice all the people in these videos oblivious to the drowning people nearby.
- cyclever 3y agoI think car drivers should be forced to stop at this kind of begging lights and be the ones to get out of their car and push a begging button in order to get a green light.
- snthd 3y agohttps://markidesassociates.co.uk/news1/177-is-it-time-to-prioritise-pedestrians-at-signalised-junctions https://markidesassociates.co.uk/news1/177-is-it-time-to-pri... >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.
- snthd 3y agoExample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csrWHw7mauc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csrWHw7mauc