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As a driver, I appreciate the crosswalk signs that count down instead of just flashing the red hand sign. That gives me a good indication of when the light is going to turn yellow.

I know, I know, the yellow light is there to warn me that the red light is coming soon. I shouldn’t need something else to warn me that the yellow light is coming soon. But, with yellow lights not always being timed correctly (i.e. cut a little short in order to write more running-a-red-light tickets), it’s good to know when the yellow will appear.

In case you’re still trying to get up to speed here, I’m writing about he crosswalk signals that used to say Walk or Don’t Walk but now have a picture of a red hand or a picture of a white person walking.

In the old days, the Don’t Walk / red hand would start blinking to indicate you needed either to stay where you were on the curb or start hustling to make it to the other side of the road, because the traffic light was going to change soon.

Where I am, it seems about half of the signals now have countdown timers next to the red hand. Instead of the hand simply blinking at you, there are numbers that count down to 0, and when it gets to 0 then your crossing time is done and the light changes.

Except some times it doesn’t.

I haven’t logged any numbers to see the proportions, but some of the crosswalks time it so 0 means the yellow light starts and some of the crosswalks time it so 0 means the end of the yellow light.

As a driver, I would like 0 to mean the start of the yellow light. Other people may disagree. I don’t really care which it is, I would just like a standard. Kind of how the colors and placement (green at the bottom) of the lights in the traffic signal are universal.

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