Not 50 minutes of human life; 50 minutes of carbrain life. There’s a difference
I’m surprised that such buttons even exist in the US.
They often do nothing.
My city surprisingly set ones up at certain intersections, where the walk lights won’t change UNLESS you hit the button. Had to get back in the habit of pressing them again
Fun fact, those are dangerous as fuck! Drivers just straight up don’t see lights that don’t regularly change.
I think the lights change (for cars) but the walk signals specifically don’t activate unless someone pushes the button.
I hate those so so much.
Ohhh. There is one near my house that is literally only a pedestrian cross light. It’s off 90% of the time. Cars blow right through it constantly with kids in the road.
Maybe some bollards could help
There’s a crosswalk near me that is normally a flashing green light when you drive past it.
I still have no idea what to do at a flashing green light. What are you trying to tell me?
Light is broken?
Yeah in my city the difference between hitting the beg button and not hitting the button is often that if you hit the button, the next time your direction of travel has the green light, the little walking man light also comes on. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect the timings at all. And if you hit the button even a split second after your direction of travel’s green light comes on? The little man does not light up, instead it makes you wait through more than an entire cycle before it gives you the little man.
New York City is awesome in this respect: They have almost no beg buttons. There is just a pedestrian phase in every light cycle, no matter what. The same way we assume a car phase in every light cycle. Because it’s a city, there are pedestrians in cities, so it’s assumed that they’re walkin here.
One thing both NYC and my city (Portland) do right is LPIs: Leading Pedestrian Intervals. At more and more crossings, they’ve been making it so that the pedestrians get the little walking man about 7 seconds before the cars get the green. Ensuring that drivers turning have to sit there and see that there are pedestrians for them to wait for.
The sense of entitlement of people inside cars is staggering
I definitely don’t want my life in the hands of someone that can’t afford to be 30 seconds late to wherever they are going.
I have become convinced that people get addicted to speed. One of the fastest ways to make some people’s blood boil is simply making them drive a little slower; even if it’s so marginal that it can’t actually possibly affect when they arrive at their destination they become furious.
The US loves to have wide, straight roads with great visibility and no obstacles on which cars could easily, safely do 80MPH (in the absence of other drivers of course) but with artificial limits of 30-40 miles per hour that everybody obviously ignores because - hey, just look at the road, it’s begging for people to go faster. The Netherlands by comparison generally does a great job of managing drivers’ expectations by adding artificial curves, places where cars have to gently swerve, setting trees along the roads that give a feeling of constraint and not “wide open place to floor it”, etc. Of course you still see people here losing their minds because they have to wait for pedestrians to cross once the light turns green, but it’s not as bad as my experiences in the US.
Addiction to speed is a part of it. I think being trapped in a car actually creates a lot of psychological issues. Another one that doesn’t get mentioned enough IMO is claustrophobia. All these psychological issues are probably big contributors to road rage.
One aspect i never see talked about is that you literally feel like you’re going slower in a car, a big part of which is because the outer parts of your field of view are blocked so you only see the things that are moving relatively slower:
I press the button every time, and if there’s a break in the traffic, I cross before it changes.
I also recline my seat on the plane as far as it goes. I don’t have any problem with others doing the same.
I’ve pressed the button when I don’t need to cross when the flow of traffic is being unsafe together.
