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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Asklemmy
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Pressing the crosswalk button over and over will make the light change faster.
Well it finally changed the 8th time I pressed it, so checkmate.
I think we know it doesn't help, but we do it anyway.
Serious question, why? Stress relief of button-pushing? Thinking it might work and that it can't be slower than doing nothing?
I just don't feel any urge to push the button.
There's no rationality to it. I don't get out my calculator and graph paper to plot out the best possible course of action. I just push the button a few times. And sometimes I push it a few more times.
Surely there's some reward or motivation, whether it's rational or not. Would you feel any different if you didn't do it?
If I didn't do it then I'd be thinking about doing it.
I'll interrogate my inner experience next time I'm standing at the lights, and I'll report back if I discover anything interesting (unless it's really damning information).
haha thanks, I appreciate it.
Apparently some are wholly disconnected, but not all, leading to some pedestrians just standing there through multiple traffic cycles because they read a cracked article in 2010 that said the buttom doesn't do anything. Pressing a second time definitely doesn't do anything but provide stress relief though.
Related is elevator close-door buttons. I hold them down for a long time which seems to work well, but for some elevators it doesn't.
Sometimes buttons don't work the first time you press them.
The buttons are intended to be placebo except in some places.
Same goes for most "close door" buttons in elevators btw. ๐
I'm in one of those places. In Utah, many crosswalk lights won't turn on at all unless you press the button, and the button can completely change the light timing and ordering (e.g. a protected left turn light activates at the end of a cycle instead of at the beginning).
Traffic engineers here are sometimes allowed to do some fairly interesting things.
Interesting
In my experience it's only automated in the cities and most of the lights are manual everywhere else.
I don't have evidence, but I have heard there are also times of day when it's automated and when it's manual. So you might need to press it at midnight but not during rush hour. Interesting if true.