In his old year cabaret show, Peter Pannekoek stated the buttons near crossings don’t actually do anything, they’re just there to just pacify people. I’m fairly certain they in fact do work, though for cyclists they’re mostly redundant: the magnetic loops in the road surface detect cyclists. Only for lightweight carbon bikes a manual button is still useful.
Am I correct in my assumption?
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At least where I live the induction coils frequently won’t pick up my motorcycle, let alone my bicycle!
In the Netherlands the buttons seem to do something - at some places, when traffic is calm, the lights are red for all, and pressing the button turns the bike light green. I’ve also noticed a waiting timer for bikes at some intersections that only activates when the button is pressed so I think it works?
I do press it because I enjoy being pacified 🙃
Eindhoven has these buttons that don’t even look like buttons, just an orange piece of plastic. Always wondered if those are fake, but I’m not brave enough to check.
Don’t they give feedback? If they are the capacitive button kind, I see them with a red light on top that tells you you’ve pressed it. “wachten” or something lights up.
They made those in many places where there is lot’s of traffic. Afaik they come from the repeatedly pressing wearing down the buttons, so they made a version without a button mechanism to wear down. Generally they’ll have a light to show they registered your “press”.
I like them. When you come near cycling, just rest your palm on the “button” while leaning on the pole while wainting for green light and you automatically “press”. Zero effort or extra movement required.
I have the exact opposite experience, I usually despise the touchy kind. My experience is that the lights in them are always broken. This leads me to repeatedly press it, not knowing if the system registered that I would like to cross. In the end, I never know on most crossings.
I like the newer blind-accessible version tho! They have a sneaky button on the bottom which also has a directional arrow sticking out of it, when pressed they make a sound, and the button vibrates when it’s safe to go!
The ones here have a red light on the button, a 4rth light on the traffic light itself, and a circle of lights around the 4rth light as a timer. The chance that they’re all broken is so small, it’s fine with me.
Didn’t know about the blind people one. It sounds cool!
@cambionn Oh how I wish we had timers!
Also I think I may be confused about the type of touch button we’re talking about here, because of your 4th light statement… Browsing Lemmy through Mastodon apps adds some difficulties, I will need to backtrack some it seems '^^
Nnnnope I’m still just as confused. What do you mean about a 4th light on the traffic light?
Do your lights give drivers a warning, like “hey there’s a bike coming soon”? As far as my experience goes, pedestrian lighting always consists of stop and go, no inbetweens.
Picture from the internet, but like this. Above the regular red, orange, green there is a 4th one with the text “wait” that will turn on after pressing. It also has a circle of white leds around it counting down to the green light. With these things it’s just lean on the pole and wait while comfy leaning.
Oh damn, that’s so neat! We do not do those little cyclist lights, except on big roads where we for some reason thought there may be cyclists… There never are because it’s quite terrifying with 5 lanes of traffic and a huge car/tram intersection in front of you.
Consider me envious!
Also our buttons look very much like those in the picture, may be worth to touch underneath and check for hidden accessibility secrets!
Huh I can’t remember ever seeing those lights. Maybe I’m just blind, or the ones on my route don’t have them.
Guess it depends. The ones here have a red light on the button, a 4rth light on the traffic light itself, and a circle of lights around the 4rth light as a timer.
I found these new signs on those buttons in San Francisco.
Depends where. Here, in the CBD a lot don’t do anything as there’s always a pedestrian walk cycle every time the lights cycle. Out of the CBD, they still work.
Mild frustration when you get to a light with people waiting and find no one pushed the button. Having to wait another cycle to get across.
Help, I can find no other meaning for CBD than cannabidiol.
Lol. Sorry. Central Business District.
I usually press them, as they light up when you press them. Besides, it also means I can keep my feet on the peddles, and the pole makes for a convenient push-off point then
heh, same :) Though sometimes an idiot has smeared their milkshake on them or similar
You hope its a milkshake :(
They absolutely do something!
If I don’t push the button, there’s a good chance that a light which looks to want to change to green, will stay red, and the flashing “don’t walk” hand will turn solid, and you’ll miss the “walk” + green.
I’ve had to wait twice as long at some crossings because of that.
Even in cases where the light turns green, if the button isn’t pressed, sometimes it will not show the “walk” symbol, even if it’s OK to do so.
I actually never did :D At some point you’ll learn it’s also going without you putting any action
What really sucks is when you’re in a left turn lane with a red arrow and the light changes for cars going straight but just keeps you with a red arrow. No button to press.Just gotta run the red cuz it’s never gonna change :(
Because oncoming traffic also has a green light? What are you doing running red lights? I have that exact setup near where I live. Straight gets green, left turn has a red arrow (meaning right of way when green), which cannot get green because oncoming straight traffic has green. Once those get red and it’s your turn in the cycle, it will go green. As long as there is any crossing traffic, you will not get green, that’s what the arrow means. Please don’t ever run a red light again, other people with an arrow probably have green and won’t expect you. If you don’t get green, check if you’ve stopped at the line, since a lot of traffic lights will skip empty lanes to improve the flow of traffic. No sense in giving an empty lane a green light whilst people in other lanes are waiting at a red light. Unfortunately I see people daily who stop well short of the line and thus aren’t picked up by the ground loops. Until people behind them honk when the light doesn’t turn green for two cycles and they pull up properly.
Oh, I hate running red lights, but the problem is some of these are designed to only trigger when a car is present. It doesn’t matter where you put your bicycle; it will not detect it.
I’ve sat at a red left-turn-arrow while the light changed for traffic going in other directions five times. If you don’t run the red, you’ll literally sit there forever because it will not change for you. It sucks, but this is an engineering problem.
Some countries are better at this than others. Some cities are better at this than others.
I always shake my head and cuss when I encounter something like this, because it absolutely should not exist.
I always ask someone else to press the button.
Peter doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There are many many low traffic intersections where the cyclist won’t get a green light without touching the button or getting detected by the ground loop. He probably lives in a city and only comes across busy intersections where the lights are simply running on a cycle because there is always somebody somewhere. And even then late in the evening those lights may switch to a low traffic mode where the way through gets green all the time and crossing traffic only gets green when they are detected or push the button.
I have a racing bike with carbon wheels and a mostly carbon frame, ground loops will not pick up my presence, so I’m thankful for the buttons. Modern traffic lights are way more complex then most people realize, often integrated with other lights to improve the flow of traffic, especially in big cities. Just because he doesn’t know how shit works, doesn’t mean it’s useless.
We should get a civil engineer in here to tell us about modern traffic lights, it’s actually very interesting.
would love a simplified version of the traffic lights, push and everything goes to green ;-) love the chaos