Edit disclaimer: Obviously don’t do protests such as these without proper consideration of the consequences. Some countries have facial recognition cameras and lots of them have laws against this. Even if I believe it’s less risky than the usual headline grabbing stuff (XR gluing themselves) you are still in danger of both being tagged and arrested or being attacked by civilians. This should only be done as part of an organisation that supports this idea and can help you understand and deal with whatever consequences arise, and should not be taken as an endorsement of “lone wolf protesting”. Change can only come through organised group effort.
A lot of the car people I’ve talked to in car cities usually cite cars being “individually convenient” as a reason why they use them. I randomly thought of a way to turn that around with very little effort.
Lots of car cities have these traffic sign buttons that operate on intervals of 30 to 60 seconds in their high traffic roads. It just so happens that some of those are where people are already waiting for the bus.
Just doing a minor experiment by triggering that button every time the sign went green for some 10 minutes it clearly caused some disturbance on a low traffic hour as an individual action. I bet even a very small group doing something like that during rush hour could cause traffic jams that XR could only dream of without having to glue yourself or risk arrests too much.
What do y’all think? It’s very likely others have thought of this and I’m late to the party.
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I don’t know which cities you’ve been to, but I’m pretty certain that these buttons in US cities do absolutely nothing and they are there for show. I swear they have no impact whatsoever on traffic flow no matter how many pedestrians there are.
Maybe like 10% of them actually work.
Lucky. My city will literally never give you a pedestrian signal till you press it. And if you press it when the cross street light is already red, fuck you wait till the next cycle.
Hardly lucky, the cars get “right of way” and waiting 2-5 minutes at every block is hardly fun.
Over here it varies even inside the city. Some of them just cycle normally and the button seems to do nothing while others stay green all the time until somebody presses them, and only stay red for like 15 seconds.
Only the latter ones are vulnerable to this tactic, but they’re also the most traffic-efficient for low pedestrian zones, so the city still hurts itself if they change due to reaction. I’ve also lived in a super car city that literally had no buttons. Car societies are weird.
They usually only have an effect during lpw traffic time periods (at night)
in the cities I have been at the buttons ether trigger as if a car tripped a sensor, and start the count down to switch, or do nothing because the lights on on a timer anyway. I have most of them mapped out where I walk, and the ones that do not matter I no longer even try to press the button
There are special sensors in the asphalt in front of stoplights that do in fact activate when cars drive over them. They also have scanners on top of the stoplights themselves that detect cars and flip the light automatically.
In Denmark, all those buttons do is give green light to pedestrians, but do not change the traffic lights for cars and/or bicycles
Wait how does that work? I’m trying to imagine it but wouldn’t the cars just run over people? I must be misunderstanding.
When it’s a road-road crossing rather than just a pedestrian crossing - which is most of the time - the pedestrians will get green light at the same time as the parallel road according to a predetermined pattern. In such cases, the button is there to provide you with an illusion of control
ironically it reduces the control because now you have to ask gently to the traffic sign to cross. Is it like Germany that people get fined for jaywalking? When I was having a lib phase and considering migrating there that was one of the biggest red flags for me.
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without having to glue yourself or risk arrests too much.
Idk the law where you live, but “criminal mischief” covers a lot, and cops’ll absolutely arrest any effective protesters. Even if they’re not technically supposed to.
They definitely can arrest people which is why I said “too much”. I think the benefit of this is that you can do it for like 5-10 minutes and just go away, while other tactics like blocking, chaining or glue require you to stay there until removed and at that point you’re already surrounded by cops. I don’t think people should do this willy-nilly over consequences and I understand it can look like that. I’ll add a disclaimer to the post.
That makes sense! I just wanted to make sure you were aware.
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What would be the point of this? We would only be hurting ourselves (Proletarians). Until urban infrastructure can support public transport a car is the only viable way to get to work and back.
Similar thing I love doing is riding my bike over the detectors in the road when there’s no cars waiting. Makes the traffic parallel to me have to stop 🤭🖕🚲💨
You must have a powerful magnet under your bike to get those sensors to trip as it’s you were a motor vehicle… 🤔
Wrong, the magnet is me sitting atop the bike
I’m not sure you understand how magnets work, son.
