Liveline today - Pedestrian Lights

billy the squid

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/liveline/

in the archive section take a listen to thursday's program in relation to Dublin City Council's decision to turn off audio signals on pedestrian lights.

A little irrisponsible on thepart of mr. Owen Keegan to take the decision to do this without first cunsulting with the people who depend on these lights.

the excuse he gave was that the audio signal to cross the road was confusing the sighted person. an lame excuse given that all a sighted person has to do is look straight in front of him and wait for a green man to appear on the other side of the street. as for not knowing which set of lights are going off at a junction, these things vibrate so all it takes is for a person to put their hand on the arrow over the button and wait for the appropriate vibration.

Give the show a listen and post what you think of the decision.

oh and while your at it take a look at joe duffy without the beard

Downtime

From what I see cycling around the city pedestrians don't use the lights so get rid of them all together

billy the squid

maybe we should get rid of cycle lanes where muppets on bycicles cycle on footpaths.

your point exactly is?

Amz

Billy there's no need to stoop to his level. Less of the tit for tat nonsense please.

Downtime, at least try and be reasonable here and realise that this issue is being discussed from the perspective of a visually impaired person. The majority of the pedestrians you have issue with are not visually impaired.

I'll have no problem banning people for not attempting to discuss things rationally.

Victor

I'm not on the traffic committee anymore, so I haven't heard (just saw the pun) anything on this.

billy the squid wrote:

the excuse he gave was that the audio signal to cross the road was confusing the sighted person.

At some crossings where there are different green man* sequences, wher ethere is a green man for one crossing but a red man for an adjacent crossing. Some people (including me, I've notice it in the last few weeks) are confused when an adjacent buzzer goes off.

an lame excuse given that all a sighted person has to do is look straight in front of him and wait for a green man to appear on the other side of the street.

The problem is that they don't.

Gah, now ye'll have me up until 4am trying to work this out.

* Is there a gender / species neutral term?

Amz

Half the time it's impossible to hear the audio signal anyway!

I've lost count of the number of times I've missed a green light because I didn't hear the signal. It's quite frustrating.

The people making these decisions really have no comprehension of how important the audio signal is for visually impaired people. I'm lucky insofar as I can generally see the green man well enough not to have to rely on the audio signal, but there are times that I'd be lost without it.

Victor

Amz wrote:

I've lost count of the number of times I've missed a green light because I didn't hear the signal.

Does the vibrator work for you.


tee, hee hee.

billy the squid

At some crossings where there are different green man* sequences, wher ethere is a green man for one crossing but a red man for an adjacent crossing. Some people (including me, I've notice it in the last few weeks) are confused when an adjacent buzzer goes off.

then can they not look that the button they just pressed and wait for the "WAIT" light to go off.

as for ajacent lights where one set of lights lets you cross half way across the street and a second set let you cross the other half of the street. (for example the two sets of lights where O'Connell Street meets O'Connell Bridge in Dublin) would it not be a better idea to have both sets of lights stop traffic at the same time?

Amz

Victor, cop on.

o Fiac

This post has been deleted.

Amz

I'm not going to warn people again, you can make your point without resorting to childish insults.

Next person I have to warn gets banned.

fozzle

I think it's appalling that they want to get rid of the buzzers at pedestrian lights, it's indicitive of the poor effort of thought that many able-bodied people put into such basic things.

Billy, wrt the adjacent lights being red/green at the same time, I'd imagine the argument against would be that traffic would be stopped for too long. But I can understand how it could cause problems.

My problem with pedestrian lights, and it's one I'd imagine is shared by visually impared people is that they're often very short. The ones by the Statoil station by the university in Galway are particularly bad. There are four lines of traffic to cross with a divider, but only one set of lights, which only gives enough time to get to the divider without running. I'm arthritic so on "bad days" I can't hurry like that, and have often barely made it to the divider before the cars start zooming by again. When I was on crutches for 6 months it was even worse.

I really think that the people who plan and design these things have no concept of the difficulties other people can have, and I know my problem is pretty mild. Bah! this makes me mad. :mad:

billy the squid

this is my opinion only so take it with as much salt as you like.

I believe that the problem lies with the newer pedestrian lights which constantly send out a tone to help blind people find the lights. here in Limerick the lights are surrounded by bumpy paving stones to let blind people know that they are near pedestrian lights.

I believe that a tone is only necessary when it is time to actually cross the road.

having thought about it a little, i believe that too much emphasis is being put on auditory signals for traffic lights, if more emphasis was put on tactile adjustments it might aid to reduce the confusion. i.e. as mentioned above, the lumpy paving stones around the lights, and vibrating signals to let a person know that it is time to cross the road.

lowering the volume of the constant beep beep beep of pedestrian lights in residential areas would also appease people trying to sleep.