Herb and Jamaal by Stephen Bentley for May 01, 2023

Doesn’t matter. Here nobody uses the crosswalks anyway.

There’s been a study that that’s actually true for a lot of them. Same with elevator “Close Door” buttons. Helps to give the person feeling like they’re actually in control of technology (when it’s actually a safety measure)

It sure seems that way sometimes but I’ve noticed in some situations that when it finally changes that there is more time to cross if you pressed the button than if you haven’t.

You need them at intersections that have magnetic car sensors or the light never changes.

People think it will change the light timing. All it does is let the system know it needs to stop traffic, even if there aren’t any vehicles on the cross-street. It will cycle, but nothing will speed it up.

It gives you something to do while waiting for the light to change.

I think the problem is Herb, you’re expecting instant response from a time set device. And each time you press the button, the time set resets. The more presses, the longer the wait.

It works just fine the first time. You’re just being impatient there, Tweeky.

There are a lot of intersections around here where the light stays green for the main road unless a car is waiting to enter traffic or someone presses the walk button. Most will not display the WALK signal even when the light is green unless someone pressed the walk button soon enough in the cycle. The button does not change the timing of the cycle but does allow the WALK signal to activate at the appropriate time.

In some places, pressing the button will turn on a speaker that sounds music or tones (or birds chirping) to let blind people know it’s safe to cross.

What’s better is when you’re waiting for an elevator, and someone walks up and presses the button, even though you already pressed it.

When we were there a decade or so ago, the crosswalk buttons in Sidney, Australia actually worked.   When you pressed one, it started ticking to let you know that it had received the signal; when the “walk” light came on, the rhythm of the ticking changed to moveitmoveitmoveitmoveitmoveit.