Walk Signals
In Ireland, that little man who lets you know it’s safe to proceed and cross the road really is green. In Canada he’s black with a dotted white outline. The authors observe that the Irish walk symbol man seems to be of the “stroller” type, while his Canadian counterpart, in contrast, seems to walk animatedly, with determined purpose and vigour.
And with practically every walk signal in Ireland, comes a pedestrian “push the button” affair. In Canada we find this is less the case.
Canadian visitors of Sophie Bury’s recently, commented on the ubiquity of these buttons, and the fact that they seemed to “have to” be pushed before one was guaranteed ever seeing the green man. Having discussed this with some Irish friends, it seems that, though it might appear pushing the button is always a must, this varies by intersection. Very often the lights are just preprogrammed. However, what we really admire about the Irish model of push buttons everywhere, is that they facilitate the combination of image and sound, so that whenever the green man appears, the visually impaired also benefit from a beeping signal (emanating from aforementioned button device), to let them know that it’s safe to proceed across the road. In Canada, as far as the blog authors have observed, sound for the benefit of the visually impaired, is far less common at intersections with lights.
The walk signal in Ireland, features a green man.
Walk signal at an intersection in Toronto.
This is the type of button which pedestrians are encouraged to press at Irish intersections, to get the strolling green man light signal and auditory signal to spring in to action.