You must log in or # to comment.
While the dude who pressed the button witnessed 100 able, adult people sitting in a polluting metal box instead of walking, cycling or taking public transport.
I once saw a jogger push the crossing button on one of the busiest roads in the city and then continue on his way without crossing. I kinda respect that kind of mad-lad behaviour. :)
Just for you, Jeff, I’m pushing every single walk button I see, especially when I’m not crossing the road.
Raises a good point. So we should destroy those cars to make way for trams.
Trams that never brake because of the collective loss of efficiency that might happen. It’s like the trolley problem except there’s 50 people on the trolley and the amount of money lost by them being collectively late for work is worth the loss of life.
Ohh yes, +1 vote for the trams of death.
I can’t stoppher capin’ the economy just won’t let me.
Add a giant “cow catcher” to the front of the tram, reinforced so that even the car brain with the most oversized pickup is at the same risk as the rest of us
no… 30s of red light for cars, every 60s, fixed schedule… no wasted time since the drivers already calculated it in :D
One hour commute to the office for a job that could be done from home is the real destruction of time in a human life.
Making ~100 cars drive 30 minutes to work every day is the destruction of 50 hour of human life, 100 hours both ways, almost every single day, but apparently cars are freedom so 🤷
The confusion I feel as a European about this post.
Despite seeing drivers enraged by road safety and basic courtesy frequently while walking, this remains confusing AND infuriating as an American.
I have no idea what is the supposed message of the “author”. Don’t cross the street?
Their logic: people in cars = captains of industry who cannot be delayed as they go to their power lunches
People on foot = slovenly, slackjawed peasants who are obviously wasting time
Only the poors walk. Don’t be poor.
I don’t understand, isn’t this the button you press if you want to cross? Are you not supposed to press the button?
In America pressing that button is considered a government handout. You’re supposed to cross the street using common sense and determination. Real men don’t even look to check when they cross the street because they have God on their side.
A real American secures the crosswalk by firing his AR15.
If you’re a true alpha, the drivers can sense it and they will stop for you.
Isn’t America the country where it’s also illegal to cross the street without a dedicated pedestrian crossing thing
Yes, it’s a crime to cross without a crossing signal
It wasn’t, and maybe still isn’t in a lot of places, but auto manufacturers didn’t want to slow their customers down after all the pedestrian injuries/deaths so they invented jay-walking as more of a propaganda thing. It’s so ubiquitous though that law or not, it’s treated like it’s a high crime anyway.
It was also instituted as an excuse to arrest colored people. Same as vagrancy.
Also illegal to eat vegetable side dishes in a steakhouse.
The last part sounds like UK.
Frogger was training for real life
They’re saying the one person walking is being selfish because of how many more people in cars are being inconvenienced. The argument only makes sense if you ignore how we got here. It ignores how inconvenient cars have made getting around for people who actually live in the places they’re passing through and how the number of pedestrians is thus artificially low; it ignores that the only reason signals are necessary is because of how absolutely shitty and inconsiderate drivers are compared to pedestrians and cyclists; it’s only counting one person per car which is lower than the actual U.S. average of 1.5 people, but it’s unsurprising that this person considers a 5 passenger vehicle a perfectly reasonable mode of transportation for 100 individuals to be driving all by their lonesome, and unsurprising they don’t think about people who are using them differently.
In short, you’re looking at an asshole who has never even thought about their own opinion, let alone anyone else’s.
Oh hey I recognize that street and that guy. He’s a free-stater nutjob who has at least one criminal investigation against him
Wow, i genuinely thought this was satire or rage bait but guy might actually think this way
by calling for child labor to be legalized, for the Civil Rights Act to be repealed, and for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be reopened “so that Anthony Fauci and every governor that locked their state down can be sent there, never again to be allowed inside of the United States”
After holding up a sign “MAGA = Socialist” at an appearance of Donald Trump, Kauffman later endorsed Trump, calling the Libertarian nominee, Chase Oliver, a “gay race communist.”
Yikes.
Kauffman was arrested in April 2026 and charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing government administration following a traffic collision in a New Hampshire parking lot. Kauffman reportedly drove into another car and began fighting several people. Kauffman also made racist comments, telling a bystander to “Go back to Africa!” Kauffman’s family members reportedly dragged him from the parking lot into a nearby store. Kauffman defended his conduct in the incident, writing “Low IQ schizophrenic Africans who scream at kids in parking lots should be deported from New Hampshire. We shouldn’t punish decent men who stand up to them."
Double yikes.
Does he not realize Guantanamo is still open? I’m a little confused on how operating it is consistent with libertarianisim. Then again libertarians have brain worms
Racist, violent, libertarian tool.
Maybe I shouldn’t tell you guys this, but sometimes I press the button even if I don’t have to cross the street. Also sometimes I cross the street really slowly, drivers get especially mad about that. Obviously I’m not from the US, since I’m still alive.
Crossing suuuper slowly when there’s a suv waiting is my fav, especially when the driver didn’t want me to cross
My dad aways makes a remark when someone crosses tge street slowly. He’s fat and slow as gell himself. I don’t understand how you can get mad at sghit like that.
I know you meant to write ‘slow as hell’ but ‘fat and slow as gel’ brought up a mental image that fits the scene.
Movement speed of a gelatinous cube is like 3 squares per turn. It’s slow as hell!
Why though, people have places to go and public transport might not be available to them. You’re punishing people for their lack of choices
Nah, you got it all wrong. I don’t punish them, I do them a favor. They mabe don’t know it, but it’s good for them if they stop occasionally.
On the other hand, they punish me, every day of every week. They punish me with pollution and noise and concrete and traffic accidents and oil consumption and heat radiation.
Deciding what is good for random strangers and then forcing them to enjoy whatever it is you came up with doesn’t sound like very good idea.
And how is this helping your situation? Breaking and accelerating increases noise and pollution. If cars have to spend more time on the street instead of being at their destination, they either need more road space or they spend more time in traffic jams that, again, increase noise and pollution. Cars are the least likely to be involved in accidents when they are cruising, so you are also making your city less safe.
Just to be clear: I’m absolutely in favour of banning cars in cities, but you are making the already bad situation worse for everyone.
Yeah, I guess I’m a litte bit accelerationist(1) with my take here. But the situation will not change if drivers have it more comfortable.
There is so much violence in driving a car, and you argue against me because I make them stop for 20 seconds. (Inner)Cities should not be build for cruising. They should be build for pedestrians. If you want to cruise, drive on the Autobahn or some Umfahrungsstraße.
Spoiler
(1) DuckDuckGo translated accelerationist with beschlagnaderungsorientiert. Since you german speaking I thought you might enjoy this.
You misunderstand me. I agree that being a pedestrian or cyclist should be more convenient and safer, and I don’t care if that means car drivers are inconvenienced by whatever it is that needs to be done to achieve that goal.
But you are inconveniencing car drivers while also making the situation worse for pedestrians, cyclists and everyone else. What you are doing has no positive effects for anyone, except maybe you feeling righteous for a moment.
Spoiler
“beschlagnaderungsorientiert” sounds like a dangerous words from the funniest joke in the world.
Are drivers not deciding and then forcing people to “enjoy” their cars ? ^^
No, they don’t drive their cars because they think it’s good for you, they drive them because they think it’s good for them.
Depends on the context I think, if you use even though you don’t need to then it’s a choice for you and people around you
But you are still driving your car because it benefits you. Nobody thinks they are helping others by driving through a busy city center.
Deciding what is good for random strangers and then forcing them to enjoy whatever it is you came up with doesn’t sound like very good idea.
The birth of an authoritarian.
I never cross the street slowly… but I never hurry, either, and even that annoys some car drivers 😭😂
Removed by mod
Lol wut. If a car doesn’t let me cross even though I have the priority as a pedestrian, I usually hit the side mirror or the car. They can go fuck themselves with their overpriced rolling boxes. People get so mad when you touch their cars. I like it.
You don’t even need to cause any damage or even leave a fingerprint and they get so angry. Its kinda funny.
I see so much road rage, but usually from extended family so I try not to start an argument that will lead to someone storming off in a strop. I find it funny that an adult can get so angry, but it upsets my partner.
I often walk or cycle past a school and a daycare, and here they have recently “upgraded roads” which means that they have scraped away a few pedestrian crossings. I 100% do shitty tricks to cars driving too fast or not giving enough space, especially if I am moving around the time kids are active. (Around here kids are still allowed to walk/cycle from school and often play around the town.)
I have made air kicks, always do when necessary, but sadly so far they have missed…
Removed by mod
You’re an actual psychopath and you should be locked away before you kill someone
Lol, if touching a side mirror gets you that angry you need to look in a mirror and think about whats wrong with you. Also I’m a carpenter, I most often have my tools with me, I could do way worse than “hitting” a side mirror if you really need something to get upset about. I bet you get half hard looking at your rolling box ^^
Unpopular opinion: Cars are expensive. Vandalizing them in response to an inconvenience seems like an overreaction.
True. However given that they’re the largest “lifestyle” contributor to climate change (as opposed to things in the agricultural sector), vandalizing one in response to it simply existing seems like a slight under reaction, if anything.
It’s symmetrical though. Sort of like a pedestrian risking death if they inconvenience car drivers
Sure, attempting to murder a pedestrian over an inconvenience is also bad.
Not sure I’d consider them “symmetrical” though… Maybe I’m being pedantic, but murder seems a lot worse.
Regardless, both are overreactions, and varying degrees of crazy.
Cutting the priority to pedestrian isn’t an inconvenience tho. It’s straight up code violation. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the police 🤷🏻
Oh, I see. It still seems like an overreaction to a code violation though.
A medal for meritorious public service and right of first refusal to carry out the sentence against the ecocidal narcissists? That’d be a well deserved surprise for any non-carhole who’s been making carholes angry.
Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Carbrained psychopaths look a people crossing the street and think: How dare they make me wait a few seconds longer. I’ll fucking hit them with my car.
And they think that’s a proportinal response. It’s just deeply sick and twisted.
How dare they make me wait a few seconds longer.
…on purpose, just to cause a reaction. You missed that bit.
When i’m driving vehicles i have to qualms waiting for elderly or disabled people to cross the street, regardless of whether or not the crosswalk has a light.
Dipshits intentionally walking slow just to piss me off deserve to piss off someone who gets out of the car and demonstrates their discontent in a more direct manner.
If you want to label dislike for lack of civility as being a psychopath so you can feel better about yourself be my guest.
I’m going to walk slowly in front of three cars just because you made this post. It’s the only reasonable response to your lack of civility.
Seriously, you’re advocating getting physical with someone because of a perceived lack of civility — literally walking too slow. I drive almost everywhere, have done so for decades, and this is not a problem I’ve had, even once in my life. If “people walking too slowly in front of your car” is a regular problem for you, you may need to cultivate more patience. You have lost the plot. You sound like you are the problem in this social interaction.
You don’t get to hit them though.
Thanks for adding more evidence to support my central thesis: good people don’t drive cars.
Fucking drivers thinking they can assualt people with their cars becase they’ve been inconvenienced
Mirrors are so breakable…
I’m pretty confident pushing the button actually doesn’t do anything. You press the button and wait forever and eventually the lights change but they were gonna do that anyway.
It depends on the intersection. Yes, some are a placebo, too many are token, but some actually work.
I know for my nearby intersections, when the button is not pressed, even when the lights change, the walk signal will never illuminate.
I’ve started walking around my town a lot more since Covid, and see all three regulalrly
In college, I lived close to my university’s campus near an intersection that would get very busy during sporting events and other occasions where there would be many people in town.
The intersection would set all the lights to red if it had detected no activity for a good while (such as at night when it was rarely used) and would also immediately change the green light for cross traffic to red if you pressed the crosswalk button so long as there wasn’t any cross traffic for a few minutes.
It was surprisingly sophisticated traffic control considering that most of the other intersections were just on simple timers.
Yeah, a lot of the time they’re just there because people look for them if they’re not and then they fidget, don’t wait for the signal and dash into traffic.
The town I grew up in, the vast majority didn’t do anything but they gently beeped, and if you pushed the button it would tell you the sign status until it completed the cycle. Helpful for vision impaired people.
There were a few that shifted the traffic lights to a different cycle and otherwise it never did a pedestrian cycle.There was one though, where pushing the button nearly immediately started a pedestrian cycle.
There was a wide block with an apartment building in the middle on one side, and a grocery store directly across from it. Not long enough that people complained, but enough so that people still trotted across the otherwise busy street a lot. After trying nearly everything else they eventually put a traffic light in the middle of the block that was nearly entirely on demand for the crosswalk button, because almost any delay and the (college student) residents would just dash across.Watching confused drivers was fun.
Does the US not have traffic light controlled crossings at all then? In the UK we have multiple types of light controlled crossings for pedestrians and others e.g. bikes and horse riders (Pegasus crossing). These are always on demand from the button.
It’s less common to have a light or crosswalk away from a junction. Usually when you push the button it changes the lights to the crossing sequence on the next cycle so everything keeps flowing, so a pedestrian might hit the button, then wait for traffic to stop, then cross traffic, then a dedicated turn cycle. It can be a bit of time.
The light in question would turn yellow the moment you pushed the button, without integration with the nearby lights. Driver’s usually don’t expect to get stopped after being allowed to pass a red light after only about 100 meters.In general, there’s too much variation to say the US as a whole doesn’t do some traffic thing. If it exists odd are someone tried using it on a road somewhere.
In terms of animals, pelican can be quite common in urban environments, zebra in suburban. I haven’t quite seen a toucan other than separate signal fixtures in downtown Seattle (my memory is a bit hazy though). I have yet to see pegasus or puffin.
Ok good. I was worried for a moment there when the commenter I was replying to painted a picture of US drivers totally confused by traffic signals that weren’t part of a junction for road vehicles.
I also had never seen a Pegasus crossing in the UK until one appeared close to where I live, it’s between a suburban area and a national park crossing a 60mph road so it makes sense for horse riders to cross there. They probably appreciate it.
You might be a little far south for the Pacific Puffin.
The one near my work extends the red light for long enough you can cross on foot & makes the walking signal & countdown appear.
It does not stop left turning cars from running us over though.
In my country, if you don’t press it, you won’t get green. The intersection will still change, but the pedestrian light won’t. If the button isn’t pressed, the intersection light will change faster, since there won’t be pedestrians holding up traffic.
I know at least some of them work, because sometimes I’ll be waiting there for the walk signal and it never appears, and I go “Oh, I forgot to push the button.”
Where I live the major cross streets’ buttons are just placebo. They aren’t even connected. It just makes people feel better to push them.
The smaller streets, however, they are critical. You will not get the walk indicator without it.
i’d like to see it the other way around, drivers have to get out and run over to press the beg button. At least they will be getting some exercise.
That’s a 6 lane road. You must be perpetually on steroids to think that would be normal.
Stroad, it’s a stroad. It’s why I hate North America.
Stroad, n. A road on steroids
Streets are intended for stops. Homes, driveways, shops. Low speed. Walkable.
Roads are intended for travel. There should be very few turnoffs, no surprise entrances, etc. Roads are intended to get you onto streets. Generally medium to high speeds.
Stroads combine the worst of both to make death traps, accidents, and make walking difficult, uncomfortable, or impossible.
A left turn lane, a right turn, and a through lane is normal? Anything else allows endless backups. Pedestrians prevent cars from turning right and left, and oncoming prevents cars from turning left, and than no one can go straight either.
It’s usually 2 lanes each way only 100m or so before the intersection and it widens to this configuration. A single lane road still usually has one type of turning lane at all intersection as well.
What are you even complaining about?
A left turn lane, a right turn, and a through lane is normal?
No. No it’s not. That’s a design for a major artery, not for every single street with shops on it. If you grew up in the United States, and haven’t traveled, I’m afraid to tell you that you’ve never seen good road infrastructure in your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonormativity
It isn’t normal to have six lanes (>80% of available space) to be exclusively for vehicles. I mean, it is normal in North America but it really shouldn’t be. The problem is two of those lanes could be a bicycle path with a tram line to allow for a lot more throughput while creating space for people to walk around and loiter which then provides increased opportunity for local business’ to create sales and boost the local economy. This would also have a knock-on effect of decreasing congestion (backups) because when there are other, viable transportation options, more people will choose not to drive. With less traffic, local trades and shipping companies will also experience greater productivity with less time spent idling, which also means less air pollution which in turn reduces strain on the medical system. Not to mention all the money saved by people not buying gas, insurance, doing maintenance, etc. (which can then be put into other industries instead of being tied up in transportation).
With stroads like in the OP, all potential customers just go right past to strip malls outside the urban centre that are essentially only accessible by driving. If they do stop at places along a stroad like this they usually park, do whatever it is they need to do, then leave asap because it’s not a nice place to be with all the traffic noise an noxious gasses. With the intersection in the OP specifically, one can imagine a sort of town square where people can sit with their family and have dinner or whatever else. Instead, it’s a few acres of asphalt that raises the local temperature by a few degrees while creating a massive obstacle for pedestrians, especially if they have to cross diagonally. The heat especially makes it a really shitty place to walk through and can even be dangerous for elders or people with weakened respiratory systems. These facts, and the almost non-existent pedestrian infrastructure creates a negative feedback loop where more and more people are using cars to get around because of how awful it is to walk anywhere leading to more focus on vehicle infrastructure, and more people driving cars.
Using only personal vehicles to get anywhere is not a scalable transportation solution and greatly hampers economic growth outside of specific industries (that are usually related to vehicles). By providing other transportation options to people by using land that would ‘normally’ be used for parking or right/left turns (especially intersections), more economic opportunity is created, business’ that rely on transportation (shipping, delivery, plumbers, electricians, etc.) will become more efficient as traffic is reduced and people that live in the area will become healthier.
I mean, overall it’s just good for the economy to provide more options and not pave the entire place with asphalt.
Why would you need three incoming lanes, though? Three outgoing makes sense temporarily, but you only need a single incoming lane if you’re going to go back down to two total, and the OP has three incoming.
“I never walk further than my driveway, so I don’t see a problem.”
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
This is is about pedestrians having to cross all 6 lanes at that spot while cars rush past. I don’t care how good it is against congestion.
Next you’re gonna tell me they should ignore the friendly button, walk 100m and cross where it’s “only” 4 lanes anymore.
What are you even complaining about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad#Disadvantages
There’s also some very nice YT videos explaining the problem and better solutions.
No, it should not be normal. In fact it is not normal in almost any city outside NA. While we still have cars in cities (which we categorically should not), we must at the very least make sure there is no more than one lane in each direction, including most intersections. “Endless backups” are unavoidable with cars in any case because of a combination of basic geometry and induced demand. We should instead optimize for the safety & speed of other road users, literally all of which are more efficient than car drivers.
I see three right hand lanes there (as in, the side of the road closest to the camera has three lanes for a single direction of traffic), which means that it’s 6 lanes by default and widens to somewhere between 7 and 9 at the intersection, depending on turn lane configuration. That is unless you want to assume an unbalanced configuration where there are three lanes in one direction and only two lanes in the other, which frankly I consider unlikely.
I said there was 3 lanes on each side?
A right turn, a left turn, and a through lane.
Those 3 close lanes would merge back into 2 100m from the intersection. It allows free flowing traffic. It allows a through lane, a lane for vehicles to turn right into as well.
That’s not how any intersection I’ve ever seen works, you don’t have more outgoing lanes than incoming straight through lanes.
This is what you describe:
This is how i think the intersection on the image looks like:
The difference seems small, but the amount of lanes after cars crossing the street is a big deal.
| < | ^ | > |
If the outer lanes are only for traffic turning left or right, at the other side of the interchange there should only be one lane left. That is not how this interchange looks to me.
People intentionally say stupid things on Twitter to rile up viewers into arguing in the replies (free engagement!) and get even people who hate them to share their “content”
At 800k impressions, assuming 10 seconds per view, this guy wasted about 90 days with his dogshit take
