I think they are meant for people to believe they do something so they’ll feel better and wait. I used to walk a lot and encounter lots of crosswalk with buttons and I got used to how fast I should go in order to catch green every time and I could predict when the next crosswalk was going to turn green. If they truly worked then they should have been out of sync. I never pushed the buttons and I saw the light turning green even though no one pushed the button, if the buttons worked then why would the light turn green?
I also asked gemini about this and he said I’m not going insane, strange because I never mentioned if I was insane or not, but good to know I’m not.
Maybe some buttons work and other don’t depending on where it is?
Depends on the location. Some places the lights turn to walk at regular intervals no matter what, the button only activates the beeping. But in my city the crosswalks never say walk unless someone pressed the button first.
Same thing with elevators. The door close button only works in a fraction of elevators.
Depends on where you are. The ones near me actually do something. The pedestrian lights do not change to Walk unless a button is pushed.
In many cases, it activates the crossing signal for the entire intersection as well. As in, traffic will stop in all directions and you as a pedestrian can cross diagonally without issue.
As others have said, it depends on location. Where I live in the US, the crosswalk won’t turn green for pedestrians unless the button was pushed. If it’s an intersection where traffic primarily flows on one street, and the traffic lights only change when the occasional car from the other street, the traffic light will never tell traffic to stop, and your crosswalk will never turn green. You have to push the button to signal the lights to change.
It’s individual at each intersection where I live, and as other comments have mentioned even varies at different times.
I’ve timed a few and found that even if it does give pedestrians a cycle without the button being pushed, at some of them pushing the button gives it to us a bit faster.
Some are functional and some aren’t. Where I live, at all the major intersections, they’re just decoration. However, at an intersection with a smaller street crossing a main one, you will not get a walk sign across the larger road without pushing the button.
