In his old year cabaret show, Peter Pannekoek stated the buttons near crossings don’t actually do anything, they’re just there to just pacify people. I’m fairly certain they in fact do work, though for cyclists they’re mostly redundant: the magnetic loops in the road surface detect cyclists. Only for lightweight carbon bikes a manual button is still useful.
Am I correct in my assumption?
Picture from the internet, but like this. Above the regular red, orange, green there is a 4th one with the text “wait” that will turn on after pressing. It also has a circle of white leds around it counting down to the green light. With these things it’s just lean on the pole and wait while comfy leaning.
Oh damn, that’s so neat! We do not do those little cyclist lights, except on big roads where we for some reason thought there may be cyclists… There never are because it’s quite terrifying with 5 lanes of traffic and a huge car/tram intersection in front of you.
Consider me envious!
Also our buttons look very much like those in the picture, may be worth to touch underneath and check for hidden accessibility secrets!