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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

2 seconds lag is pretty long, and easy to notice. Nobody can cross the street in 2 seconds. So if there isn't enough margin of safety to be sure it is safe with the lag, then there wasn't enough without it too.

Most likely the help was just help find the button and then tell the blind person when the walk light lit up. Most busy intersections have a light for pedestrians, but many do not have any help for the blind. This is very much region specific - when I was in Germany all lights had a beep (in that one city). I've never heard such beeps elsewhere, but things can and do change faster than I travel to other cities.

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Lights in the UK have a small cone on the bottom of the button box that turns when the light is green https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-22706881

“I was waiting at the pedestrian crossing, holding onto the small metal cone, when someone grabbed my hand, like when you grab a small metal cone.

It turned out..”

This could become some kind of romantic movie.

We're also currently trialling Bluetooth add-on transceivers to the cone functionality to make crossing even easier.

One of the problems of the cones is that once the cone turns you often need to reposition yourself in the centre of the entry to the crossing before setting off (in order not to stray into traffic or bump into barriers).

With the prototype Bluetooth beacon your device can receive the signal when it is safe to cross whilst you're stood in the centre of the entry.

Australia has a very distinct sound literally everywhere that has a traffic light pedestrian crossings, and has for as long as I remember. To the point that I was shocked upon going overseas and finding places without them. There’s numerous YouTube videos of foreigners showing it off when they visit Australia.

The beep comes from behind a steel panel just under the button for the lights too, so if you’re both blind and deaf you can put your finger on it to feel the pulses of the tone.

Fun fact: Billie Ellish sampled it for the chorus of “Bad Guy”. Trance DJ Giuseppe Ottaviani also made a track prominately featuring it, “Crossing Lights”.

In Switzerland the beeping lights exist as well. Mostly in city centres though and not at the edges of a city or in smaller towns.

In the Netherlands we have a kind of rattle. Slow when red fast when green and intermittent when about to go from green to red. Although I must say they are not everywhere.

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