ossie wrote:I had no idea that if you pressed the button and the traffic cleared after you press it, the lights won't change. I guess that's down to the detector things on top.
Its clever but for someone raised in a country where jaywalking is illegal it kind of goes against the grain.
I think that some lights will cancel if they detect that you have crossed (or walked away) and so, not stop road traffic unnecessarily. Lights will always wait for a gap in the traffic before giving red to the road traffic. If there is no gap, then after a delay, they will stop the road traffic irrespectively. I've never had lights that did not go to green for pedestrians because there was no traffic on the road.
I don't press the request if there is no traffic, or I can see a gap. However, if I have pressed the request, I often have safely crossed before the lights change, and then hear the beep beep beep behind me a few seconds later, as the traffic now stops for an empty pedestrian crossing. The lights are biased in favour of cars, which backfires because many pedestrians (and more so cyclists) will have crossed before the lights change.
So, a system that is intended to not stop cars ends up stopping cars unnecessarily.
I could wait for the lights to change, but that will just delay me, and make no difference to the road traffic (other than be less frustrating to drivers). Or I could wait wait longer before pressing the request button in case there is a gap soon, But if there isn't a gap, I would then have a double wait.