There’s a street here in Madison, Monroe Street, where the city has put rout red flags on stcks for pedestrians to use. At the corners of intersections, there are bins like umbrella stands with these flags in them, and people carry wave them as they cross the street and deposit them in the bin on the other side.
Monroe Street has been pretty overwhelmed by vehicle traffic in recent years. Besides being one of the major access roads to downtown and the UW Madison, it has its own neighborhood, shopping district and a two schools with their own vehicle issues. At some point they lowered the speed limit to 25mph to try and slow things down with no apparent result.
So now they’ve put out these flag things. AFAIK, they have no legal statis, like f’rinstance a school crossomg guard who presumably has some legal authority to direct traffic. Yet there are quite a few pedestrians in the neighborhood who use them like portable stop signs. The grab them, wave them and GO. I think they are neighborhood activist types who see themselves as defending their neoghbors by confronting Evil Through Traffic. At least one person has been killed while crossing with one of these flags.
This is one of thise compromise things that I’m not sure is doing anybody any good. The city could slow down traffic with more lights, stop signs, or even speed bumps. They don’t really want to do this since it’s the only relatively direct way out of downtown to the southwest. So they hand out these props which seem to embolden the pedestrians to march right out into moving traffic.