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?
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!
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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.