[M.M.X.I.V. 12] Crosswalks

Perhaps the topic of this is somewhat off-topic regarding today’s Daily Post, but I will treat it like a “Daily Post” anyway, including putting a roll of other blogs that looked at this post at the bottom, as of 16:29 CST on 1/12/14.

One of my favorite quirks is my obsession with crosswalks. One of my earliest memories of crosswalks involved my dislike of the fact that the orange words were “DONT WALK,” since I’m such a grammar nut for not losing apostrophes. Because of the strange obsession with them, I’m tagging this as an Asperger’s post.

When I moved to Lincoln, some of the crosswalks, rather than having “WALK/DONT WALK,” had a white walk-person/orange hand. Eventually, I decided to cross crosswalks in Lincoln by imitating the gait of the walk-person depicted on the display, and then to, when the walk-person changed to the blinking hand, I would also alternate my left hand between the hand and a fist, in sync with the blinking.

Although Mom and Dad were sometimes amused by this, my siblings were not amused, and Mom and Dad cautioned me that others might see it as weird as well. Although I rarely do this anymore, there are times where I am walking in a crosswalk and am moved to give the walk-person gait.

I also like how many crosswalks now have walk timers on them, to let you know how many more seconds you have before it turns to a solid “don’t walk” signal. Of course, in some sense it can turn a walk into a race to beat the light. I first saw this in Lawrence, when returning from a dorm bowling night at the Duke TIP camp in 2001, and they started appearing in downtown Lincoln in 2004-2005.

And there are also crosswalks with sound effects. One at MIT made different sounds of birds chirping, which amused me (and also had the countdown timer), when I visited in 2004 and 2007. Now, on Sheridan Road, the buttons to activate the crosswalks beep (for visually-impaired people?), and when you press the button, it will say, “Wait.” Hold it, and it says, (for example), “Wait. To cross Sheridan Road at Foster Street. Wait.” One of my friends, Manny, likes to say, “For what?” as there is a “Wait” crosswalk in Indianapolis too… just outside the convention center.

And, the Northwestern band has taken up to this “Wait” as well as a distractor when the opposing team is dribbling, so I’ve joined in with it as well. 🙂

In Lincoln, there’s a beeper crosswalk too… but unfortunately it isn’t a “Wait” variety. Instead, it’s a “Travelling north.”

I close the post with a hack of the standard description of the signs, where “walk” means “Start crossing–watch for turning vehicles”, flashing “don’t walk” means “Don’t start–finish crossing if started”, and solid “don’t walk” means “Pedestrian should not be in crosswalk.” The hack comes from the LA area, and I saw it on a few crosswalks at UNL back in 2008-9:

A great hack on crosswalk poles–whoa, almost too big for the page! (Courtesy: Jason Eppink)

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Today is the twelfth day of M.M.X.I.V. That makes one week and five days.

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[M.M.X.I.V. 12] Crosswalks

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