crossing signals

At pedestrian controlled intersections… does it matter how many of the four buttons are pushed before your light goes green?

Those buttons control “pedestrian cross” times. They have zero effect on when you get the green light, only on how loing your “walk” signal is turned on for.

This has always amused me. As Q.E.D. said, the number of times the button is pushed has no effect on when the signal changes. I push the button once, and I wait the same amount of time as someone who pushes the button over and over again until the signal changes.

I remember from a psychology class in high school that pigeons will adopt certain “rituals” that, to them, appear to have an affect. Whether or not the perform the ritual had no effect on whatever reward they were seeking, but they did them anyway. Since the outcome occurs when they do the rituals, they believe that they are having an affect on the outcome. The idea was that people will do the same thing without thinking logically about what they are doing, and that is a way that “superstitions” get started and spread.

So when I see someone pounding away on a crosswalk button, I think of the pigeons. If asked, I think they would probably say, “See? I kept pushing the button and the signal changed! I made the signal change by pushing the button 100 times!” But I’ve found through personal experience that pushing the button only once (or twice, to make sure I did indeed close the circuit) causes the signal to change in the same amount of time as when it’s puched numerous times.

That’s usually, but not always, true. The old pedestrian crosswalk in front of my old apartment triggered the walk signal immediately after the button was pressed, provided that a couple of minutes had passed since the last trigger. It was a terrific system, since car traffic was never interrupted at all unless there was pedestrian traffic waiting to cross - a minimum of stopping and waiting for everyone. [gripe] Naturally, it was later replaced with a more conventional and wholly inferior timer-based system, to the detriment of both traffic and safety. [/gripe]

I think what the OP was asking was: Are there intelligent traffic light controllers that factor in the quantity of traffic waiting when deciding when to change signals? That is, do some of them shorten the car-traffic cycle if it’s obvious that lots of pedestrians are waiting (at the various corners of the intersection)? I don’t know the answer. I would guess that some systems can be set up this way, but that in practice most systems are not set up this way. It is certainly true that lots of traffic signals consider the quantity of car traffic waiting when scheduling signal changes, so why not pedestrians?

The bottom line is that the button or buttons do whatever they are programmed to do by the traffic control box at the intersection. Usually it varies based on time of day, traffic patterns, etc.

There is a light near my home that during off-peak traffic times the button will change the light instantly. During the day, it will not change instantly, but when the light does turn green, it will stay green a little longer and light up the “walk” signal.

There is not one set rule for what the pedestrian buttons do or do not do.

…and you will all nod your heads to yourself being the only person in the lobby, you push the elevator button, and if ten more people join you, one after another, they will ALL hit the button as they arrive. Is this a ‘never trust your fellow man’ thing?