Idiotic pedestrians

[Freak]

I hope this is in the right place. Okay, so I walk home from work and from uni, and there's a particular intersection I happen to use. It's the intersection of two quite busy streets.

Now, until very recently, the pedestrian signals went green for all crossing at this intersection at once. This meant that pedestrians could cross diagonally (e.g. from the south-west corner to the north-east corner), and this was very common. Recently, they changed this to a more standard system, whereby the east-west crossings can be crossed at one time, and the north-south crossings at another.

Whether or not this is a good idea is irrelevant, since it is primarily the change that's causing the issue. Now obviously, people who were wanting to cross diagonally would stand at the corner, rather than at the section specifically intended for pedestrian crossing. As a result, the city decided, with a surprising amount of intelligence for them, to put up thick, bright orange barricades at each corner, essentially funnelling people into the correct crossing. In addition, these barricades had signs attached describing the change, and there was also an electronic billboard at the intersection mentioning the change. Also, you know, only one set of lights turn green at a time, so you're pretty obviously crossing against one red light.

But of course, as you can tell from my topic title, so many people can't seem to grasp this simple concept. I must have crossed through about a dozen times since the change, and every time, someone has tried to cross diagonally. The city has to actually have people at the intersection to tell these idiots not to go kill themselves. Even when crossing only with green lights, this isn't exactly the safest intersection. I've nearly been run over a couple of times there, and I consider myself to be very careful. Now these people want to cross against one red light, in heavy traffic.

Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. Pedestrians around here cross against red lights so often it's positively ridiculous.

[SongsOfDragons]

Somewhere in the UK - IIRC either in Oxford Circus (?) in London or in Oxford itself - an intersection like that has been painted with diagonal crossing marks as well as the edge of the box. I wish they'd do it in Winchester where there's a six-way intersection - all the lights beep at the same time but they don't give you enough time to cross, but barriers or painting or not, the council won't do squat.