I didn’t know this (via Neatorama)
Supposedly the pedestrian buttons on robots (traffic lights for foreigners) in the US don’t do anything and neither do the “Close Doors” buttons in elevators/lifts. I guessed the closed door button didn’t do anything as the interval between pressing the button and the doors closing always appears to be random.
I have seen that giving people a control for an aircon, even if it doesn’t do anything, completely changes what they think the?temperature?is.
The placebo affect is very cool…
It’s the same with traffic lights in the UK. After extensive research I have concluded that it doesn’t matter if you push the button or not, the lights will cycle in a very specific way. By learning the intersection, you can cross the lights before the change and leave other pedestrians in your wake. Also especially useful when it’s raining and you have no umbrella and every minute counts. (Or when it’s raining and windy in which case the umbrella may as well be at home.)
The only exception I have found to the rule is when it is a pedestrian only light (ie, not an intersection) and even those take so long that by the point the green man lights up, you’ve crossed the road already and the car drivers are left stuck at a red pedestrian light with no pedestrians.
So I don’t push those buttons any more, and it usually infuriates the person I’m with.
I wonder what other countries call them robots…
Actually that would be an interesting bit of research… who else calls them robots? I know some our neighboring countries also call them ‘robots’…
In SA the buttons still do something to the traffic lights, although I often wonder what the effect of the pedestrian crossing has on the flow of traffic.