Comment by scotty79
4 days ago
Interesting thing here is blinking red for pedestrians before it turns solid red, indicating that you should finish crossing.
In Poland blinking green has the same meaning.
In Berlin and Sydney green for pedestrians is very short and basically lets you enter the crossing. But red doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the crossing. You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing. It feels way better from pedestrian perspective when compared to Polish system where green means you are safe, blinking green means you need to run for your life and red means that drivers can legally run you over and you are about die (they can't but that's how it feels).
> You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing.
Well, up to a certain extent at least. Behind the scenes, German traffic lights for example usually assume you continue walking at 1.2 m/s – if you start crossing at the last possible moment and are slower than that, you will still run into the case where crossing traffic will potentially get a green signal with you still on the road.
Thanks for clarification.
Sure, but as a pedestrian you have no way of telling if you took too long so the burden of not hitting you is firmly placed on the drivers.
In Poland it's bit more muddy in drivers' minds. If they hit a pedestrian who was still crossing the road while the light for him was red they think it's partially pedestrian's fault because he shouldn't be there.