Rubbish (dangerous) design

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while and this post by tech blogger Jeremy Keith reminded me about it. This is slightly different to the average post you’d find here on Binary Moon, so if you want the normal content you will have to wait a few days. I have a number of posts in the wings so things should be back to normal shortly.

I live in London but recently have been making many trips to Norwich, a city about 120 miles away. Norwich is a lovely peaceful place, and has many things to recommend it but there is one thing that really frustrates me. The crossing signals.

I don’t really see the point in going over them again since you can see the problem on Jeremies post of the same subject, but I have to share my amazement that something as rubbish as this ever got designed, let alone created and installed somewhere publically.

To save the trouble of moving away from my wonderful site (afterall – why would you want to go anywhere else?) I’ll outline my problems with the signals.

1. No sound : If you’re not staring at the signals you won’t know they have turned green and you can cross
2. Easily hidden : You only need one person to stand in front of them and you can’t see a thing so you have to hope that person is paying attention since you have no sound to alert you to anything
3. Low visibility : As well as being hidden when waiting to cross they’re hard to see when you’re actually crossing the road.

In fact the council are aware there is a problem, as a number of the new signals have recently sprouted signs nearby explaining how they work. Here’s to hoping the system is returned to it’s former glory soon. Afterall (and this is a cliche but fits perfectly…) if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

So thanks to Jeremy for basically… um… writing my post for me.