OK, someone developed a traffic signal improvement that recognizes that a pedestrian wants to cross the street. Great! It’ll save people 3 or 4 seconds and the onerous task of pushing a button. You’ll be able to tell future generations about how strenuous being a pedestrian was in the old days! I’m sure your grandkids will be impressed.
Why are these people fixing the wrong problem? That’s NOT the big problem with traffic lights! The big problem with traffic lights is that they can’t look down the approach roads even as much as a block to see that there are no vehicles approaching. How many times have you been stuck at a red light and there’s no cross traffic of any sort visible for two or more blocks? And the stupid signals can’t recognize this situation and cycle the lights?
I’ve heard they’ve made big advances in computer vision, but no one’s come out with a fix for this problem. I’m not going to believe AI exists until someone does.
Well, it’s not really that simple. Traffic lights have to work in concert with the other traffics light to keep traffic flowing. In the late evening, when traffic is sparse, a lot of traffic lights do exactly as you suggest.
Also, the button does nothing unless it’s at night for the reasons I described above.
I doubt very much laziness is the reason for the pedestrian sensor. I’m visually impaired. The walk signal button at intersections in my city beep so people like me can find them. However, sometimes the beep can’t be heard over loud traffic, and sometimes the audio signal doesn’t work at all. Sensors sound like a great idea to me!
Most of them around here do not. They’re working on their own. This being the suburbs, there aren’t a lot of them that close to another light. But even the ones that are that close don’t seem to coordinate their lights.
No, not exactly as I suggest. What they do is shorten the cycle so that a vehicle tripping the induction loop sensors in the red direction gets a very quick green. But that’s not what I suggest. That light will change almost immediately no matter if there’s traffic in the current green direction or not. My suggestion will mean traffic approaching in the green direction will not get a sudden red in their face. The lights should wait for it to clear the intersection before changing the lights.
The button tells the traffic light to change the walk signal the next time there’s a green going that way. The walk signal won’t come on if the button is not pressed. And having the walk signal on results in two important things: 1) the timing of the light may be extended and 2) the left turn signal stays red instead of changing to flashing yellow. (Not all traffic lights do the left-turn-flashing thing, so #2 doesn’t apply at every intersection.)
Traffic light synch is a fucken joke on the highway from the major town to my joint…despite the fact it is a major highway!! The stupid minor roads coming in get precedence FFS.
This. I was just out; didn’t get to press the button in time. My choices were to cross with the green light & red hand or wait for an entire cycle to cross with the next green light & white ped signal. Also, that button is set back from the paved part; one needs to step into the mud to be able to reach it. In the winter, when there’s snow on the ground it really sucks.