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.

  • HaSch
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    1 year ago

    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

    • albiguOP
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      1 year ago

      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.