A steady red light means stop and pedestrians are given the standard signal to cross the road. This is the only unambiguous phase of the entire cycle. But after a few seconds, the solid red light changes to an alternating red light, like at a school bus or railroad crossing. In both cases you really have to stop, and for good reason, because children or a train are crossing the street. But on a Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon, alternating red lights mean you have to stop, make sure no one is crossing the street and then keep driving. This same behavior would get you a hefty fine if you were riding a school bus, and virtually obliterated on the train tracks. The correct red light behavior for “stop, look, go when it’s clear” is a flashing, not alternating, red light. They were so close to making the right decision, but then they took the wrong turn and used the wrong signal.
Not that it matters much. The UMass Amherst study found that 65% of drivers blew through changing red lights without stopping, regardless of whether pedestrians were present or not. Maybe they’ve given up trying to figure out what these confusing signals are trying to tell them and decided to just go. Worse still, this phase is near the end of the pedestrian crossing cycle, with the last few people perhaps rushing to get across before their lights turn red and traffic starts flowing again. So instead of keeping pedestrians safe, this creates a situation where people run into the crosswalk while traffic runs a red light, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon could be simplified to overcome many of its shortcomings. If we still accept that it is acceptable to drive through a dark signal, we can remove the confusing flashing yellow part of the cycle, which leads directly to the normal behavior of a solid yellow light, followed by a solid red light signifying stop, as we expect. We can either change the alternating red lights to flashing red lights to accurately convey the “stop, look, go” behavior they are trying to convey, or we can skip this phase altogether and leave the red light on for as long as it takes the pedestrians to cross, only turning it off when their crossing signal has expired.
Or we can simply replace the hybrid pedestrian beacon with a standard red, yellow and green traffic light. It conveys all the behavior we want, and by the time we solve the problems with the new signal, we’ll be just a green light away from this.
#pedestrian #traffic #lights #confuse #motorists #Jalopnik