Pedestrian Mind-Control
Posted: Tue 1 November, 2005 Filed under: Sweary, Thoughts 4 Comments »Have I missed something? Are a large proportion of the population actually telepathic?
Every day I have to cross the road near my workplace, and I (generally) use the pelican crossing in order to do so. For those not in the know, this is the crossing with the “walk/don’t walk” red man/green man lighting system, that tells you when it’s safe to cross the road, because the traffic light has been set accordingly.
This system is not intelligent. It can’t – to my knowledge – detect when people are stood there waiting to cross. In order to tell it, you have to press the button, at which point a light on the box goes on, effectively the crossing saying “Ok, I know people are here, so I’ll get working on changing the lights”. It’s not difficult.
Every day, there’s at least one person just standing waiting for the lights to change. It’s not always the same person, but it’s always the same scenario – they’re the only person at the crossing. Now, I get to the crossing and I admit, I tend to make an assumption. I shouldn’t, but I do. I assume that the person has at least one brain-cell of their own, and has pressed the fucking button. But no – they seem to be assured of their own telepathic abilities, and think that the crossing will just know that they’re there and waiting. Occasionally common sense will suddenly strike them, they’ll look at the control box, and then press the button – even more occasionally looking sheepish at being such a twat.
More often, though, it’s down to someone else – usually me, in the end, when I’ve realised that my assumption has again been proved wrong. So they’ve waited – and still someone else has had to activate the crossing. Maybe they’ve all got servants, and are used to not having to do anything. I don’t know. But it’s certainly bloody annoying…
Corollary : By the way, the button only needs pushing once. To the fuckwits who stand there continually pushing the sodding button – it doesn’t make it work any quicker. It doesn’t think “Ooh, there’s lots of people pushing me, I’d best do it quicker”. So just press the bastard thing ’til the light goes on, then fucking well leave it alone!
Even worse though, are the people who don’t look to see if the button needs to be pressed but just press it as a matter of course and stroll across the empty road thereby causing the lights to stop the traffic when there’s nobody waiting to cross.
Now that’s REALLY twattish behaviour
Actually Lyle, some of the crossings are intelligent, even more so than the fuckwits using them. Some have pressure pads built into the tactile paving (that bumpy pink shite that pisses you off but stops blind ppl getting squashed) and some actually have sensors built into the traffic lights. This is new technology and not applied consistently or even evenly across the country.
Did you know you CAN make the lights change straight away? Under the box is usually an indented button or a twisty thing, press or twist that before pressing the main button…Bingo!
I thought the twisty thing was for blind people? If you feel it, when the lights change it starts turning round.
I’ve come across the intelligent crossings too. They’re very annoying, in that if you push the button but don’t stand in quite the right place, the crossing will assume you’ve gone away and refuse to do anything.