
The secret button at pedestrian crossings - morphics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-22706881
======
mixmax
A good friend of mine had an amazing experience showing what blind people are
capable of. He overheard a middle aged man who had obviously been blind for a
long time schooling a young girl who had recently gone blind on how to get
around. They were standing on one side of the road in a quiet neighborhood,
and the man was teaching the girl how to assess the distance across the road.
The way he did this was absolutely incredible: tap the cane on the curb, and
you can hear the echo from the curb and buildings across the road. With
experience you can hear how far it is.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
A few years ago, Paul McCartney performed at the White House. Toward the end
of "Hey Jude", where there were a lot of people up on stage singing the "Na na
na na..." part, McCartney accidentally knocked over a mic stand while crossing
the stage back to his piano. Stevie Wonder, who was standing nearby, shot his
hand out and caught the falling mic stand.

Here's a video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3OC_mKo2Fk#t=341s>

~~~
gadders
Blinness is a spectrum, though. To be legally blind I don't think you have to
have 0% vision in both eyes.

I'd be more inclined to believe Stevie has some residual vision, rather than
he was using echo location.

~~~
samatman
He used his ears. Stevie Wonder's retinas are not attached to his optic nerve.

------
tokenadult
I'll look for those here in Minnesota, but I don't think those have been
installed yet. The intersection near my home that I reach on walking trips to
shop, a busy intersection between a state highway and a county highway, had
all of the pedestrian crossings upgraded in the last two years. The traffic
light poles include pressable buttons that activate a spoken word warning to
walk or not walk, with the spoken phrases about which street to cross making
clear which direction has the pedestrian right of way. This is out in the
outer ring suburbs. The intersection is, I think, in the top ten statewide for
largest number of traffic accidents each year (motor vehicle to motor vehicle,
mostly, but some involving pedestrians too I think).

In the downtown of Minneapolis, weather has suggested a different solution
since the 1960s. Minneapolis has an extensive network of "skyways," covered
bridges at second-story level between buildings,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System>

<http://www.skywaymyway.com/>

and those are so used now that many businesses think a skyway-level location
inside a building is more valuable than a street-level location. There is no
issue of a pedestrian running into car traffic at skyway level, and no issue
of slipping on snow or ice, which was the original reason for the skyway
system.

~~~
callahad
> _The traffic light poles include pressable buttons that activate a spoken
> word warning to walk or not walk, with the spoken phrases about which street
> to cross making clear which direction has the pedestrian right of way._

That same button vibrates when it becomes safe to walk.

------
shanelja
I was hoping it would be a button to instantly change the lights in your
favour, now there is a button I would use.

~~~
tomsaffell
Certain traffic lights in the UK have something like that. If you flash your
lights (at night) as you approach they will change. It's sometimes used where
a minor road crosses a major one. At night the lights are configured to stay
green for the major road, until either: a) a vehicle is sensed waiting at the
minor road's stop line; b) a flash of light detected from the direction of the
minor road.

The crossing of the A60 into Rempstone is one such example.

~~~
bmslieght
I am a traffic signal engineer. They don't.

They may have a detector (ir-red/mircowave/inductive loop) that detects your
approach. At night, as they may be no conflicting demands - the side road will
change Green ASAP.

~~~
paulbennett
Do they, or did they used to, have light sensors to detect emergency vehicles
coming through? Perhaps that was just an urban myth.

------
davefp
"Hugh Huddy is blind and works for visual impairment charities' umbrella group
Vision 2020. He says he is always pleased to see a cone on a crossing"

~~~
micampe
Blind people I know use the verb themselves — and joke about it.

~~~
Cthulhu_
We had a presentation by a pair of UI design consultants, both blind, showing
us how they used a computer. Their use of phrases related to seeing (that we
take for granted) managed to catch the attention a lot more - and they cracked
puns at it all the time.

------
simias
In France there's a button at the same location that activates a (very
annoying and very loud) bell sound when it's safe to cross. Needless to say
I've seen it mostly used by curious/bored non-blind people.

~~~
xyzzy123
In NZ there's a vibrating nubbin thing plus a "safe to cross" noise.

The most evil thing in the world would be to play the "it's safe to cross"
noise continuously on your car stereo :/

~~~
xlevus
Depends where you are, and how old the crossing is.

(from memory)

The older type has a small needle on the bottom that vibrates/jabs you.

But the newer crossing have the larger larger buttons. Which have an
electrical(?) panel on the direction arrow. like:
[http://www.sunlive.co.nz/assets/images/site/110520-crossing-...](http://www.sunlive.co.nz/assets/images/site/110520-crossing-
death.jpg)

------
tome
That's not a button.

~~~
drostie
You're right. We should stop calling anything a button which is not used to
fasten cloth via a buttonhole, even if the entire English-speaking world uses
the term euphemistically to refer to round things.

~~~
tome
I take it you're being sarcastic.

Perhaps my English is letting me down, but besides clothing buttons (and also
the US word for what British English calls a "badge") I've never heard
"button" used for anything that you can't communicate with by pushing it.

~~~
pessimizer
I guess you could communicate with me by pushing my bellybutton, but I
wouldn't be 100% sure what you were trying to say.

~~~
tome
:) However, would you call your bellybutton a "button"? I think it's a
compound noun where "button" can't stand on its own in a meaningful way.

------
keiferski
I've always wondered why elevated pedestrian walkways aren't more common. Too
expensive, no doubt, but the savings in travel time and lives from accidents
seems worth it.

~~~
jaibot
Two cases: Dense urban areas and sparse lightly-trafficked areas. In lightly-
trafficked areas, you're absolutely right about the cost limitation.

In the dense urban case, where "elevated pedestrian walkway" means "getting
people away from cars", it means decimating foot traffic to stores and
restaurants, ceding the area to automobiles. Generally regarded as horrible
for dense urban environments.You see this more in urban planning a few decades
back, and it tended to not help the surrounding area. If you look at the
places where people want to live and travel to, you don't see elevated
walkways. So it's fallen out of favor, with more emphasis on getting speeding
cars away from dense areas.

The exceptions are things like the NYC Skyline, which is basically a
pedestrian freeway between and through areas already dominated by pedestrian
foot traffic and relatively light and slow vehicular traffic.

~~~
mseebach
If by Skyline you mean Highline, then IMO it's quite different. It's not a
purpose-build walkway, it's a disused railway converted into what I'd rather
describe as an extreme elongated park than anything particularly optimised for
pedestrian traffic.

~~~
jaibot
Yeah, meant to say "Highline". I believe traversing the NYC Skyline is
reserved for Spider-Man.

------
bitwize
When I was in Brisbane, most pedestrian crossings vibrated and made a
distinctive sound -- a single "chirp" followed by quick beeps -- to indicate
it was safe to cross.

In Boston, to disambiguate different nearby crossings, the walk signals may
make different noises. It used to be a beep in one direction and a chirp in
the other, but these days it could be a snare drum in one direction, and a
cowbell in the other. (I guess some city planner had a fever for which there
is only one prescription...?)

------
kisielk
In Burnaby, BC we have some pedestrian signals that will audibly count down
how long is left to cross the road as well as providing a visual counter on
the signal itself.

------
thezach
Here in Kalamazoo, MI we don't have these... but all of our crosswalks beep
and talk.

For example it will tell you "Water, Walk sign is on across water" and then
count down when you get 15 seconds away from the point when you can no longer
walk.

I do wish it would say "Walk on water like Jesus did"

------
kall
We have a similar vibrating button in Germany that also indicates in which
direction this light actually points with a tactile arrow.

~~~
patrickg
Not only that, it also tells you if there is an "island" in the middle of the
road where you should step over. The arrow has a bar through it (looks a bit
like a cross sign)

------
Fletch137
We were told about them in school - I use them when looking at my phone with
headphones in when walking around cities. Maybe telling people about them is
now more relevant than it was when I was in school, for just this reason.

------
dayjah
In San Francisco the button you press vibrates aggressive when it is time to
cross. I just discovered this yesterday and thought it amazing. Consider my
surprise to read this today!

------
nivla
Wait but isn't this the purpose of the chirping sound when the crossing signal
comes on? Far more effective and serves more than one person. However I
realize it may not work on people who are both blind and deaf.

~~~
oakesm9
If there are two crossings next to each other where either can be on green
while the other is red, the noise wont be there. It's to make sure that
someone waiting at the red crossing does not hear the noise and cross. I think
the article mentions that somewhere.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
The intersection crossings in my hometown and in my current city all have
noise. They just use different noises for the different directions. E.g., N-S
crossings might chirp while E-W crossings might beep. (I don't remember
exactly what the rule is, but I'm sure a blind person would.)

------
JDGM
At many of the crossings in Ise, Japan there is a button to call for
assistance crossing the road. Or give more time to cross for old people. Or
something like that, which I didn't quite understand.

I remember going there with a friend who was absolutely _furious_ with me for
pressing the button, twice in fact. This was on one of the most sacred days of
the year to visit Ise, one of the most sacred places in Japan, and it
punctuated a long string of hilarious/egregiously-insensitive etiquette
blunders I had made throughout the day.

------
Rovanion
In Sweden the traffic lights make different ticking sounds depending on what
state they are in. The traffic lights have three states: red, green and
blinking green which means that it'll soon turn red again. Super handy for us
seeing too since you don't have to watch the light to know when it's changed.

There's a sound clip on Wikipedia in which you can hear two of the states:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/LA2_dont_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/LA2_dont_walk.ogg)

------
cesarbs
Here in Bellevue, WA they have an interesting (not to say obvious) solution to
having a sound play when there are pedestrian crossings in both directions.
The north-south ones play a sound, while the east-west ones play a different
sound. As far as I've observed, that's consistent throughout the city. Some
crossings don't have sound, though. I'll check if they have the cone thing.

------
ohwp
In The Netherlands we have a ticking sound in the pole called "rateltikkers"
(rattle ticker). When red the tick is about once per second. When green it is
ticking very fast.

------
antihero
As kids we used to believe that if you manually turned the knob, it would
force the lights to go green.

