MP "horrified" by footage of multiple drivers hitting cyclists and pedestrians at "Britain's most dangerous" zebra crossing

Why only in built up areas? Are rural pedestrians less important?

Nope, it is the total lack of concern from anyone in the video, not just that driver. The two pedestrians who were also waiting to cross, just stand there and watch, then wave the cars who stopped for them to cross onwards. 

I think it's bad, full stop, in lots of cities. Cycling home, the other evening, fro the City in London, along the new Cycleway 4, I had a taxi driver driving along it towards me (fully segragated path- clearly marked as such) I didn't give way to him, so he had to drive over the kerb back onto the road . Pretty sure he did it just to avoid the traffic lights on Rotherhithe roundabout. A little further along, when the cyce lane merges into the road, a car blasted through a red on the signal controlled crossing for cyclists. Good job I guessed he was going to do it and waited for him.

The solution is heavy duty retractable bollards, which only retract once an approaching vehicle is stationary and there is no-one waiting to cross.

It's the length of the wait I often find hard to understand. Even on a straight length of road, even if it hadn't been used for many minutes, there could be a 30 second delay. Why?

And on multi road junctions, when the vehicles might be stopped at lights anyway, no automatic green for pedestrians (or cyclists, if toucan). Again, Why? Why no green man from when the vehicles have stopped until 10-15 seconds before the vehicles get to move. I have used some that once the vehicles have stopped, if the beg button has been pressed, the green man will not appear until the vehicles get to move and then stop again. And then this has to be performed multiple times to cross the junction. Why?

Your lights are too stupid.  Notjustbikes (being an engineer) has the "compare and contrast" of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4

(He's also got a good one on crossing the road in the US vs. NL which has some consonance with the UK).

In the final analysis I think it's down to "motor vehicle capacity is the primary objective" plus "keep it simple" (for the drivers mostly - but also for the design and build).  And a measure of UK "risk aversion" - but it's the people making decisions who are avoiding the risk, not the public at large.

Ranty Highwayman also has several deep dives into lights and pedestrian crossings (e.g. here) including how what are (or should be) political decisions about how we allocate space get fobbed off on engineers.

I dont mind at a junction waiting for the next turn, so to speak, what I object to is pressing the button, and the lights doing a full turn sequence for each side of the junction before it decides the pedestrians can cross.

which then annoys me even more when motorists still jump the lights, usually just to join another queue of traffic beyond the lights. Id fit far more cameras to lights, and have pedestrian crossings react instantly to a push button.

Traffic lights can be programmed to account for weight of traffic. For example, near me there is aright turn filter that appears only to be triggered if the lights sense more than 3 or 4 cars queuing to turn. Some problems will have times so they may change instantly but there is one irritating one near me where I am sure that it will only start a 2 minute timer once the button is pressed.

Having been at a few planning meetings and consultations, the main highways people definitely are primarily concerned with vehicle throughput. In the end, they will get slated for very visible traffic jams. Who noticed pedestrians waiting patiently as being a problem.

Signals can operate in a variety of ways, fixed timings with pedestrian phases, fixed with on demand ped phases, loops for queue detetors but most signls are now being upgraded to MOVA whenever theres a highway scheme, which is more intelligent and can adjust its own programming depending on whats going on around it.

https://trlsoftware.com/products/traffic-control/mova/

IanMSpencer wrote:

Traffic lights can be programmed to account for weight of traffic. For example, near me there is aright turn filter that appears only to be triggered if the lights sense more than 3 or 4 cars queuing to turn. Some problems will have times so they may change instantly but there is one irritating one near me where I am sure that it will only start a 2 minute timer once the button is pressed. Having been at a few planning meetings and consultations, the main highways people definitely are primarily concerned with vehicle throughput. In the end, they will get slated for very visible traffic jams. Who noticed pedestrians waiting patiently as being a problem.

Two things (and I'm probably preaching to the choir):
 1. Beg buttons generally benefit no-one. They delay pedestrians for no reason, often there will be a natural break in the traffic the and the waiting pedestrian(s) will cross and then the light will change and traffic will be held up unnecessarily.
 2. If we want less traffic, we need to encourage people to drive less. A very cheap way of giving a little encouragement to those who choose not to drive, is avoid penalising pedestrians who want to cross the road.

Most of the junctions I use on the cycle path alongside the A369 travelling near Bristol are of this kind.  If you don't press the button, there will be no 'pedestrian' phase at all.  If you do press it, you will get a short 'pedestrian' phase at the set time in the cycle (which bears no relation to where in the cycle you actually pressed the button, if you see what I mean).

brooksby wrote:

Most of the junctions I use on the cycle path alongside the A369 travelling near Bristol are of this kind.  If you don't press the button, there will be no 'pedestrian' phase at all.  If you do press it, you will get a short 'pedestrian' phase at the set time in the cycle (which bears no relation to where in the cycle you actually pressed the button, if you see what I mean).

I don't know if I'd class this as a beg button - in my mind beg buttons are the ones which are on lights that aren't part of a cycle, the ones which penalise pedestrians (and cyclists in the case of Toucan crossings) for absolutely no reason and for no benefit to anyone.

The buttons which form part of a cycle are different, I don't necessarily expect a whole sequence to change because there people waiting to cross... that said, they aren't without issues - my two biggest issues with them are:

 1. They often show a red man when it is perfectly safe to cross - there might be a left filter which shows traffic a red light for 3/4 of the time, but even so, it will generally only show a green man for 1/4 of the time.

 2. Large junctions are often designed such that pedestrians, if they choose to wait for a green man, must cross a crossing in several stages, going from one refuge to the next.  There might be 3 refuges, meaning that pedestrians have to wait for 4 full cycles of the traffic lights to cross a single road.