Tuesday, December 03, 2019

it seems these have been around a decade, but haven't been installed anywhere in the USA yet... but they make sense. The less time you have left to get across the street, the faster the sign indicates you need to move

7 comments:

  1. Acoustic traffic signal, we got those for many years now on many crosswalks. Pretty good idea to help blind or with vision disorder people. This one sound like canary, we got similar on less active crosswalks and a lot launder on major road crosswalks.

    Any idea why they had been not installed? It's rather cheap and simple solution but it helps a lot.

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  2. I can only speculate that cities in the USA, and counties, and states, and the federal govt are all bankrupt is the reason. I know they're bankrupt, that's not even a question

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    1. I did found some info that NYC did install couple of such systems in 2016(?) but cost of it per unit is for some reason just enormous. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2016-aps-program-status-report.pdf

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  3. We have them in Chelan, Wa...The 1st time you hear the beeping you wonder what's going on?....

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    1. Sometimes it have sound like some old movie bomb countdown, make you a little nervous first time :D

      But psychological it have interesting effect, when tone start to speed up at the end of green light people subconsciously start to move faster, you almost obey! that sound. And in times when people have "smartphone syndrome" and they are bent over the screen not looking around, not to mention on traffic lights, such sound is doubly useful.

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    2. Oh and we have also some "speaking" modules in couple of places. First time I did stand on red light, green light show... the sound start to beep to move and some nice lady voice said on my right: "You can now safely cross trackway" (as it was near tram stop)... instinctively I said, thank you. Now I can put that in to my resume, being polite to traffic lights. :D

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    3. I was a military police and while playing traffic control target (a joke, as standing in the middle of an intersection is a dangerous place, and someone could easily run you over) I would move my arms in a dust rag using movement, just back and forth... and slow when I wanted people to take it easy, use both hands in a slow basket ball bouncing movement to get people to understand I wanted them to slow down, and if I wanted them to speed up, I would use fast full arm movements with some body twist like I was swinging a bat.
      It works... people catch on fast that they are being given a speed up or slow down motion.

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