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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 11:23 
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Warwickshire seem to be replacing pelican crossings with puffin crossings.
Pedestrians don't seem to have a clue how to use them. as the indication to cross is on the same side of the road, and often not near the request button it is difficult for pedestrians to read the correct signal. They seem to respond to the green pedestrian/cycle symbol on an adjacent crossing, or just try and work out whether it is safe to cross by looking at the signals for the road users. I have seen several near misses, and many confused pedestrians, especially where there are a number of adjacent crossings. Perhaps we should go back to the older, clearer signals.


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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 15:38 
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But the new puffin signage hass less chance of confusing drivers compared to the pelican lights.


Last edited by nicycle on Sat May 12, 2007 16:15, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 15:55 
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And the "all red" bit makes... or in their language "forces" drivers to wait longer in order to piss them off.

I have no respect for puffins any more. As a pedestrian I don't use them, as a driver I ignore them. They cause too much anger otherwise.

There is no new signage..?

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 16:44 
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Location: Treacletown ( just north of M6 J3),A MILE OR TWO PAST BEDROCK
oniznorb wrote:
Warwickshire seem to be replacing pelican crossings with puffin crossings.
Pedestrians don't seem to have a clue how to use them. .


They've just changed some Zebra ones in my neck of Warks and despite the time these have been in the pedestrians still hadn't worked out that cars need time to stop.
Possibly Warks is at the present moment "high " on a new finance year .But then again , they replaced one pelican and one Zebra on one road , resurfaced the road in that area and left a 2in trench accross the road further up.

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 16:52 
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Agreed, with the nearside indicators, Puffins are completely non-intuitive as far as pedestrians are concerned.

They also needlessly delay motor vehicles through replacing the flashing amber stage of the Pelican with several seconds of solid red.

Notoriously the subject of a (so far) 55-page thread on another forum.

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 17:26 
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On a search ,for differences noticed some attempt to counter the "push & run " game - is it effective ?

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 19:28 
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botach wrote:
On a search ,for differences noticed some attempt to counter the "push & run " game - is it effective ?

That is the ONLY advantage of a puffin crossing, if you press the button and then cross the lights don't change.
In theory.
In practice they do change anyway.
In theory the whole idea is great. In practice it's a load of ... nonsense.

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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 20:54 
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When using crossings as a pedestrian, particularly when there is only a single lane to cross, then I will cross on red if nothing is coming. The crossings don't seem to be able to dectect this, so why not provide a cancel button I can press to avoid stopping the traffic?


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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 23:27 
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They want to stop the traffic. They have an anti-car agenda. It says as much on the front page of a local newspaper. Although it says that our council "aren't doing enough"...eh?! They hate us.

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PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2007 12:31 
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Ziltro wrote:
botach wrote:
On a search ,for differences noticed some attempt to counter the "push & run " game - is it effective ?

That is the ONLY advantage of a puffin crossing, if you press the button and then cross the lights don't change.
In theory.
In practice they do change anyway.


I've had to do dances to keep reminding a crossing i'm there in the past...


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PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2007 14:29 
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Because sensors never go wrong..... :lol:

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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 21:01 
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Pelicans are being replaced by Puffin crossings here in Crewe and have definitely increased the danger. This is because the time allowed to cross is far longer than the Pelican, because this allowed drivers to move on if there was no longer anybody crossing at the yellow phase by making it flash. The Pelican goes through the Full Monty from red - red and amber, green, and only at green can motorists move on.

The trouble is that the Puffins, despite their high-faluting radar beams and other nonsense, take so long to cycle round from stop to start, that the Council have increased the pedestrian waiting time to clear the traffic, so people now get fed up waiting and jay-walk across. Foolish I know, but that's what happens, especially near the railway station as plenty of people have tickets to buy and trains to catch so are in a hurry. Under the old pelicans, the motorist didn't have to wait long and neither did the pedestrian.

Yet another clownish idea from our useless Department for Transport.

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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 13:49 
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In chelmsford there is a DC (albeit a 40mph) that roughly cuts the town centre in two, in the time it has been active there have been 16 major accidents and two fatalities, not bad in two years.

The biggest problems seems to be:

1. Long wait and cycle times leading to jay walking

and

2. Because the ped signs are at waist height they are obscured by pedestrians, on a busy day they cannot be seen at all so when one person near the sign decides not to wait and jay walk, the other pedestrians who cannot see the signal act en masse in a lemming like display on the assumption "The guy near the sign is crossing, therefore, it must be ok / it must be green for peds" and of course the audibal warning is so quiet that it cannot be heard properly.

The local paper did an article a few months ago, I added comment and one of the things that struck me was that as a system, especially the positioning of the ped signs they were a 'fail to danger' system rather than 'fail to safe'.


Local council currently doing what it does best, sticking head in sand and hoping problem dissapears.

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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 11:18 
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There are two issues about having the signal for peds to go on the post rather than on the other side - one is arguably temporary, that people aren't used to looking in the new place.

But the other is that it's surely a good thing for people to be looking across the road for the indication to go, that way they are automatically also aware of the traffic, and prepared to cross. Plus all the other issues like visibility that have been raised above.

I also find that as a driver the red/green signal on the post at the opposite side of the road is plenty clear enough for me to notice - more so than the old red/green man up high facing across the road (I am also unhelpfully good at reading upside down writing, so that I don't realise it's upside-down - 'No Entry' written on the road for people coming the other way spooks me at times...).

Maybe there's a whole other issue in this, which is that too many crossings/junctions etc. have been needlessly complicated with cycle lanes, odd angles etc which have meant various types of lights at different angles so as to be more confusing for the different users - hence this new idea.


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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 15:27 
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The idea of nearsides, so I'm told, is to force people into looking in the direction of the traffic which would first hit them. Which of course diverts attention away from traffic the other side of the road, so I don't know how that helps.

Then councils who don't realise this (because councils are stupid) put the nearsides all over the place, even meaning you have to look behind you to see them.

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