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?

  • Cambionn
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    1 year ago

    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!

    • RoboticCreations@socel.net
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      1 year ago

      @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 '^^

      • RoboticCreations@socel.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Cambionn
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • RoboticCreations@socel.net
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            1 year ago

            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!