Originally Posted by
RCMoeur
Pedestrian hybrid beacons have been in use for over two decades, and have a remarkably good safety record in terms of crash and injury reduction. The initial research showed a higher red compliance than standard green-yellow-red signals.
Sounds like you are talking about something different as such a claim is simply not credible for the devices currently being installed in MA - and that's the police department's finding, even more than mine. Nor is there any logical basis for such a claim.
Part of the issue with compliance is that they don't show a green phase when idle, so people don't remember that there is a device there. I think I've only ever actually seen the one over in Hadley activate once, the rest of the time it just looks like some past or future detritus of non-ending construction.
But if you re-read more carefully, you'll see you're also missing the bigger issue:
they dishonestly tell drivers they can go at the same time they tell crossing users they can be completing crossing.
This is astoundingly misleading, because crossing users are used to honest traffic lights which continue to show a solid red to the road during the complete crossing countdown.
Yes, a driver is not technically permitted to proceed while someone is still in the crosswalk - but that requires that they
see the person.
And yes, technically crossing users are not permitted to begin crossing once in the countdown phase - but people unaware of the nature of these new deceitful devices have a lifetime of experience of doing exactly that, especially when the countdown falsely appearst to indicate 10 remaining seconds of safety.
The problem is their novelty and dishonesty.
Do you have any actual data to support your assertions?
See the linked article where the Hadley police observation found huge rates of confused drivers misunderstanding theirs - they weren't ticketing, just plainclothes observing. And this followed a school child's injury at theirs.
In actual practice, survival requires treating them as uncontrolled crosswalks - you go when traffic in
both directions has stopped, and you do so even if the walk light isn't on yet, because
the walk light is far too short and then allows drivers to start up again -
drivers eyes on you, not the light, are what enable survival.
And they're basically one user / party per button push - if you weren't already at the line, an attempt to ride across is going to result in a collision when drivers start up after the person their eyes were tracking is across.
The way these "novel" designs are willing to get the unexpected second user killed just to enable driver's convenience relative to a traditional solid-red light is just plain unacceptable.