Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

I always used to think that at junctions with pedestrian lights they were only activated when someone pushed the button. i.e. if nobody was waiting to cross the road then the lights wouldn't change to red to let (the non-existent) person cross.

Driving through central Manchester every morning to work I see that this isn't the case. Even if nobody is waiting to cross, all the lights at a four way junction turn red & the pedestrian lights turn green. This holds up traffic for no reason & increases journey times and pollution unnecessarily. This is known as a 'full pedestrian stage'.

This has been picked up on by the RAC Foundation...

Link

Drives me mad! :mad:

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

They should get rid of some traffic lights, they just cause jams... The traffic flows more freely at some junctions when the lights are not working, drivers are more careful and alert. imho.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

We should adopt a system I saw in the US (Florida).

At red traffic lights you can turn right (obviously it would be left for us) providing it was safe to do so, we did this several times.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

East Germany still has that system... works well,imo

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:54 ----------

agreed

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

And watch the number of pedestrians killed crossing the road at traffic light junctions soar.

I've experienced traffic lights Florida style and I think it's a nightmare. Especially as it's a state law, not a federal one, so out-of-state drivers and pedestrians frequently fall foil of it.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

Its certainly not limited to Florida.

When I was in Philadelphia they used the same rule.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

Long cycle time?

Not in Cambridge... Most cyclists here don't seem to realise/care that traffic lights apply to them as well... Makes it rather irritating for pedestrians such as me :rolleyes:

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

I don't think that's what it means unless that's meant to be ironic ;)

I think it means cycle as in the length of time it takes for the lights to go through all of their stages and back to 1

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

Yes, I realise that now :D :dunce: :o:

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

Some traffic lights are timed for crossings to come on automatically at busy times.

In my home town during mornings when kids are walking to school and when they r coming home from school the crossing comes on automatically every few mins allowing them to cross.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

The running joke around Miami seemed to be that it was a good way of killing off people visiting from New York.

Actually, all it needs in order to achieve this safely is for designers of traffic light crossroads to make better use of filter signals. At a tee junction or at crossroads where a junction allows traffic to move from only one direction at a time, there's often no reason why traffic on the road immediately to the right, waiting to turn left, could not be allowed to do so via a filter. They are often not installed though, presumably to save money on the installation.

Whoever was the traffic engineer in Strathclyde when most of the traffic lights were installed is an exception though. Many of the traffic light junctions around here are notably more creative and efficient than other places I've lived.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

"Roundabouts are green" said a local councillor "traffic lights use energy 24/7, and do not guarantee economic flows of traffic".

The trouble is the council seems to have taken the "green" part too far... you can't see traffic coming at you around the roundabout until they round the last bend due to masses of tall greenery planted inside the roundabout circle.

And now they've started putting traffic lights on roundabouts!!

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

They do that deliberately to ensure people slow down when approaching...

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

<slightly OT>There's a roundabout near my dad's place...it's on a bus route. The turn is so tight there is no way the bus can negotiate it without going over the roundabout. Which planning genius did that?</slightly OT>

I noticed this 'full pedestrian' thing years ago, and it's always annoyed me. The buttons for pedestrians are just a sop to them, to give them the illusion that they exert a measure of control over the lights (if, that is, they don't know the damn things will change regardless) - and it's a dangerous illusion. The problem as far as I can see is that usually the drivers do know the traffic light patterns, but the pedestrians do not. The pedestrians, therefore, are expecting the lights to behave as if they are a true pedestrian crossing, i.e. change on demand - and they're not.

How many people are injured or killed as a result, I wonder?

Also, why bother wasting public money on the buttons if they don't actually do anything?!

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

There seems to be an increasing trend for pedestrian crossings to no longer be Pelican, i.e. flashing amber, but instead to have a complete cycle of everyone waiting going nowhere when the average pedestrian has long since crossed and is already 20 yards down the road :( I can't see any real benefit to safety, and it certainly isn't green as we all sit longer with our engines running.

Bottom line traffic lights aren't there for drivers, they are there to keep the traffic planners in jobs.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

One thing to keep in mind is that the timing for traffic lights needs to consider the slowest pedestrians. It may well be that your average 20 year old is 20 yards down the road by the time the signal changes, but that time may just be sufficient to cross the road for a 70 year old. Traffic lights can't sense how long it'll take people to cross the road (yet), so you need to presume they will be slow.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

Yes but the flashing amber light was to allow those who needed more time than the sprightly 20 year old to finish crossing, yet under normal circumstances the average wait time gets reduced. Even with the amber light the crossing red time to traffic was still set to allow sufficient time for most people to get across with traffic stopped.

Re: Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty
 

It's got to the stage now where the pedestrians control the traffic.

There's a road near us where the local Council installed a new pedestrian crossing 3 years ago, it's a nightmare right from the word go in a morning right up until the traffic dies down about 6:30pm, the pedestrians are forever pressing the button stopping the traffic, it lets 2 cars through at the most. At rush hour the traffic can tail back well over ½ a mile due to the crossing.

There was nothing wrong with the old one so why fix something that isn't broken?? When it was cold in December they were stuck on green, there wasn't any hold ups then.:D