Puffin crossing. Dangerous?

dombat

They seem to be installing these 'puffin' crossings around here.

Why is there no green man opposite?

It seems like you just have to wonder into the road with everyone else, not knowing whether the man is red or green.

I cant believe they are safer than the 'global standard green man opposite' crossings. Will we get used to them? Seems like change for changes sake.

domd1979

Further info on Puffin crossings at:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tpm/tal ... ancrossing

The idea of near-side signals is to help people who have visual impairments. They're also supposed to allow a pedestrian to watch oncoming traffic and see the green/red man indication at the same time.

dombat

mmm, so they penalise 95% of the population who can see the green man and don't account for large numbers of peds at weekends who cant see anything as 50 people line up on each side wondering "what is going on". Insane.

I'd love to meet the team that designed it, to find out what was going through their mind.

domd1979

The issue of near side signals was quite a controversial one in Birmingham a few years back following the installation of a number of new crossings as the city centre road layout was changed quite substantially. It culminated in near-side signals being taken out on certain crossings (on Moor Street), on others an extra set of near side signals have been installed higher up the pole (Old Square) so that peds can still see them when the crossing is busy.

dombat wrote:

mmm, so they penalise 95% of the population who can see the green man and don't account for large numbers of peds at weekends who cant see anything as 50 people line up on each side wondering "what is going on". Insane.

I'd love to meet the team that designed it, to find out what was going through their mind.

formerlyknownasbonj

I don't understand this.
I looked at the 'operational diagram' behind the link to the DfT website provided, and it appears that it's on red for cars AND peds for most of the time. What's the point in that?

What's the difference between this and a pelican crossing?

domd1979

Puffin crossings replaced Pelican crossings. Main differences are that Puffins do not have a flashing amber stage and use detectors to monitor pedestrians and vary the signal timings accordingly. This is reflected in the operational diagram - i.e. ped is crossing, red man indication comes up, but detectors hold vehicles on red until ped has crossed, plus some safety overlap. Red man lights because although a person on the crossing has time to cross safely, there may not be time for a person who starts to cross to get to the other side before there's a vehicular green. There's also no "blackout" stage (neither green nor red man lit) on Puffins that you get on some signals.

formerlyknownasbonj wrote:

I don't understand this.
I looked at the 'operational diagram' behind the link to the DfT website provided, and it appears that it's on red for cars AND peds for most of the time. What's the point in that?

What's the difference between this and a pelican crossing?

dombat

This is interesting (puffing good practice guide).

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/gpg/puffingoodpracticeguide01


These statements from the document are interesting too,
Page 45
c) large numbers of pedestrians crossed without pressing the push buttons, up to 49 percent at one site

Also page 45
There was little change in overall numbers of accidents following the conversion of Pelicans to Puffins but there did appear, however, to have been some increase in pedestrian accidents.


Seems like the main problem with pelicans was the "flashing green man" (no one knew what it meant). Why didn't they sort this out instead?

spen666

dombat wrote:

This is interesting (puffing good practice guide).

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/gpg/puffingoodpracticeguide01

...

Also page 45
There was little change in overall numbers of accidents following the conversion of Pelicans to Puffins but there did appear, however, to have been some increase in pedestrian accidents.
...

So we have reduced the number of non- pedestrian accidents at the expense of the safety of pedestrians? :!: :?:

dombat

yeah, madness.