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from the push,-pull,-swipe,-turn-and-Pong dept.
Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. You finally get a green light, cross the street, arrive at the office, get in the elevator and hit the close door (>|<) button to speed things along. Getting out on your target floor, you find that hurrying has you a bit hot under the collar, so you reach for the thermostat to turn up the air conditioning.
Each of these seemingly disconnected everyday buttons you pressed may have something in common: it is quite possible that none of them did a thing to influence the world around you. Any perceived impact may simply have been imaginary, a placebo effect giving you the illusion of control.
In the early 2000s, New York City transportation officials finally admitted what many had suspected: the majority of crosswalk buttons in the city are completely disconnected from the traffic light system. Thousands of these initially worked to request a signal change but most no longer do anything, even if their signage suggests otherwise.
[...] Today, a combination of carefully orchestrated automation and higher traffic has made most of these buttons obsolete. Citywide, there are around 100 crosswalk buttons that still work in NYC but close to 1,000 more that do nothing at all. So why not take them down? Removing the remaining nonfunctional buttons would cost the city millions, a potential waste of already limited funds for civic infrastructure.
More examples are quoted in linked article, and some suggestions how tech can make our lives more pleasant while waiting - Pong anyone?.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:08PM
I know a nearby crosswalk with a button that only works during low traffic hours because when it's rush hour the crosswalk never gives pedestrians the signal to walk. So basically, you end up with people waiting there a cycle or so and then playing frogger because some assholes don't think pedestrians are important enough. Playing mind games with people is going to get you dead pedestrians.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jasassin on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:05PM
Modded you up and I feel you bro. My whole city is filled with that stupid fucking bullshit. I wont even get into the asshole that times the lights so that as you go down the road at normal accerlation and maintain speed limit you hit EVERY MOTHERFUCKING RED LIGHT ON THE ROAD. Ok. Im done. Thanks.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:25AM
Back before they started putting speed cameras everywhere, I found that if you took off from a green light, accelerated smoothly but quickly to 10km/h over the local limit, you would then hit green after green for the next five to ten sets of lights. If you stuck to the speed limit, you might get the next yellow, but the one after that would definitely be red.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 24 2016, @11:49AM
I won't even get into the asshole that times the lights so that as you go down the road at normal accerlation and maintain speed limit you hit EVERY MOTHERFUCKING RED LIGHT ON THE ROAD.
That just means you need to either speed up or slow down just a little as you approach the intersection and you'll instead be synchronized with the yellow or green lights instead. (Or speed up a lot; as someone observed on That Other Site long ago, if you're in sync with traffic lights at 30mph, you'll also be in sync at 60 and 120…)