[lll-o-lll]

There is one downside. Here in Australia, the walk signal does not happen unless you press the button. The unwritten convention is that if you are the first to the button, you will press it. Others arriving later will not press, for fear of looking like untrusting fools.

This works fine 99% of the time. However, sometimes my wife will be there. She never presses the button (because she’s ADHD and always forgets), but stands nice and close. A pile of pedestrians will mill around, the lights will change, and the walk signal will stay red! Someone will then annoyedly step in and press the button approximately 20 times while everyone waits for another light cycle to complete.

Her other trick is to enter an elevator and press no buttons. Eventually the lift will go somewhere, but she is often surprised at the destination!

[kaoD]

Don't you have indicators? In Spain the buttons (which BTW are increasingly uncommon, cars lost the battle) have two large indicators, lit depending on the state:

- Please press

- Wait for green

[fian]

Some pedestrian crossing buttons play different audible beats so blind people know when they can cross. Famously the beat of one in Sydney was sampled for a Billie Eilish song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-zeJRjP6xA skip to around 4:00 mins).

However others have no indicator or sound. To make things even more confusing is the pedestrian crossings can also be programmed to happen automatically at peak times with no button press, but absolutely need a button press outside of peak hour.

[lll-o-lll]

No, no indicators. Just a great big shiny button to press (or not press if you are my wife).

[pixelesque]

No indicators on the unit itself, but the opposite side normally only has the red man light illuminated if you've pressed it doesn't it, and no light at all if it needs to be pressed and hasn't?

At least that's the way it is here in NZ, and when I've been in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane I haven't obviously noticed a general difference to here in NZ (there are particular crossings that are sometimes a bit different, i.e. you never need to press, but)...

[lll-o-lll]

In NSW, the red man is always there. No indication that the button press did anything at all.

Feedback would obviously solve (or at least alleviate) the problem I mentioned. It would, however, be much less amusing.

[askvictor]

That big button, incidentally, is quite a nice piece of industrial engineering. It uses a hall effect sensor and magnets to maximise the lifetime of the button.

[_kb]

For those not from AU, the PB/5 [0] is an icon of design history.

[0]: https://theconversation.com/sublime-design-the-pb-5-pedestri...

[Ekaros]

In Finland there is just a light above button in the box. It will light up when it is activated. Or actually when cycle is activated so also for other side. Decent enough UI for non blind, with blind I think there is sound in some cases.

[erhaetherth]

Floor 3. It goes to floor 3. At least in my building, which I think has 5 floors. So I guess it wants to wait in the middle to be equidistant to all floors, but I suspect there is a flaw in that math because ground floor probably gets more traffic.

Also, my wife is the same.

[aikinai]

I think you’ll enjoy this sketch:

https://youtu.be/QUg1t-JfAyY?si=pIiq2--f7WfkKYMG

[estiaan]

I find this so interesting because I also live in Australia but I will always press the button if close enough without much thought. I’ve gone my whole life thinking of this as just a normal thing, if not a slightly good thing for being the person who can be bothered to press it. So i was completely unaware of this unspoken thing haha.

[ttymck]

I fear looking like a trusting fool.