This is another of my pet peeves: traffic lights for pedestrians. They vary so much but I really find myself wondering about the way that the timing systems are designed. Sometimes it seems that there is a reasonable amount of thought involved in the system design, at others, and more often, it seems like pedestrians are definitely not really thought of except as another traffic flow. The difficulty with this latter matter is that pedestrians aren't cars and our psychology isn't the same as a driver's.
Concretely: I walk a lot in urban areas. I find it vexing to feel dutiful and so wait for a green man when it appears that there is no vehicle traffic moving, doubly so when it becomes apparent that there have been periods of time sufficient to let me cross when no vehicles moved. Triply vexing when it seems likely that this is because they haven't really considered pedestrians as such, merely as another element in the sequence; so our ability to get across need not be subject to quite the same timing constraints as for motorised traffic. (Though conversely, it is a bit concerning that the bleeping crossing indicators seem to assume that people walk at my high speed: they probably need about 5 seconds more for most people)
It actually becomes dangerous when this isn't attended to properly. Why? Because pedestrians move slower and so (relatively small) distances have greater significance to us. It may not seem as bad to wait for 30 seconds in a car, somehow, but knowing you could have crossed the road and be 30 yards nearer your destination as a walker is significant. So, having too long to wait at traffic lights breeds impatience and tends to nudge pedestrians to cross, sometimes at risky points in the cycle. I wonder if there is any research into this, and if there is, whether anyone has actually tried using it to design fitter-for-purpose traffic light systems for pedestrians.
What would help would be to design light sequences either to be more responsive to pedestrian presence or to allow more frequent crossing making waiting time never more than 30 seconds or to do what China and Japan seem to do and have countdowns telling you how much time you have to cross which gives you the autonomy to make the informed choice.
Hell is others in the sense, here, of having to suffer the unthinking design choices of others and what I shrewdly suspect is prejudice against non-motorised road users.
it is worth recalling that except on motorways, in GB pedestrians actually have right of way, I understand, so the red and green figures are advisory. (I may be wrong). In Germany, by contrast, they are mandatory and you could be fined for crossing when the red figure shows -so I was given to understand.
Showing posts with label hell-is-others. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hell-is-others. Show all posts
25 July 2012
28 June 2012
Rant about texting walkers
Most of us never notice the mildly complex 'dance' we do when sharing the pavement with people walking the other way. It starts about 30 yards away on a clear causeway, closer obviously if the line of sight is obscured by people or objects. We look at the person coming our way and make a judgement about what trajectory they're taking. If it looks like it may intersect with our own, we each make little course adjustments all the while checking out the other's adjustments and if necessary adjusting further. Normally this allows both parties to devise non-intersecting routes in fairly short order. Just occasionally the random re-selecting of trajectories results not in a non-intersect but in a repeated intersect and we do that dance of apologetic sidestepping until we may even have to verbally or gesturally unjam our little quasi-crash. Most of the time we don't even consciously notice we're doing all of that.
BUT ... when someone is not looking because their gaze is entangled in a screen as they walk, all of that reading the tiny adjustments to trajectory is thrown awry, even worse when they are given occasional attention to the walkway because then you don't know for sure what they may have seen or not seen, whether they are going to continue or check -and certainly you can't assume that they will notice that because, for instance, you have people either side of you, you have little room for manoeuvre. Head in a smart-phone? Grrr: non-cooperative pedestrian.
I used to do it until I realised that it made me a pain to anticipate and increased my chances of collision or near-collision. I now tend to stop and find a spot out of the way of the main flow of walkers to deal with my text message or map directions. Please, people, do likewise and stop getting in the way of the rest of us who are paying attention to what we're doing. ...
L'enfer, c'est vraiement les autres. Nous vous remercions de la phrase, M. Sartre.
BUT ... when someone is not looking because their gaze is entangled in a screen as they walk, all of that reading the tiny adjustments to trajectory is thrown awry, even worse when they are given occasional attention to the walkway because then you don't know for sure what they may have seen or not seen, whether they are going to continue or check -and certainly you can't assume that they will notice that because, for instance, you have people either side of you, you have little room for manoeuvre. Head in a smart-phone? Grrr: non-cooperative pedestrian.
I used to do it until I realised that it made me a pain to anticipate and increased my chances of collision or near-collision. I now tend to stop and find a spot out of the way of the main flow of walkers to deal with my text message or map directions. Please, people, do likewise and stop getting in the way of the rest of us who are paying attention to what we're doing. ...
L'enfer, c'est vraiement les autres. Nous vous remercions de la phrase, M. Sartre.
14 August 2011
With 'friends' like this, who needs other faiths?
I got this email recently. Interestingly it was picked up as spam (rightly) -but as it's not everyday I get faith-based spam, I thought I'd look it over. I wonder whether someone has a list of CofE related contacts especially for this kind of thing?
I was just taken by the tone of it: it is so unwinsome and so unloving. It does not commend itself even at the simple level of creating rapport with the reader. It couldn't possibly persuade or create an opening to try to win hearts or minds. It merely 'shouts' frustration and rage. Question; would I really want to to join a set up who are so enraged and whose writing seems so distant from Christ's spirit?
On another point: it accuses the CofE of "preaching a different gospel". This is clearly untrue: since when has a moral issue been gospel? To suggest that it is, seems more like salvation by works -and that really is a different gospel in Paul's terms.
Next question: how often do we come over like this?
I was just taken by the tone of it: it is so unwinsome and so unloving. It does not commend itself even at the simple level of creating rapport with the reader. It couldn't possibly persuade or create an opening to try to win hearts or minds. It merely 'shouts' frustration and rage. Question; would I really want to to join a set up who are so enraged and whose writing seems so distant from Christ's spirit?
On another point: it accuses the CofE of "preaching a different gospel". This is clearly untrue: since when has a moral issue been gospel? To suggest that it is, seems more like salvation by works -and that really is a different gospel in Paul's terms.
Next question: how often do we come over like this?
To Representatives and
Believers
of the Church of England
God’s anathema upon the Church of England
General Synod of Your Church resolved that “homosexual orientation in itself is no bar to a faithful Christian life or to full participation in
lay and ordained ministry in the Church”.
You have rejected God’s laws and the authority of God the Creator and Supreme Lawgiver. You no longer call evil evil, a sin a sin, an
abomination an abomination. You exchanged the truth for a lie and turned the Church of God into a synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9).
The fruit of perversion is no blessing but a curse and self-destruction.
The apostatical Church of England has ceased to be a blessing for the
nation and brings down a curse upon it as well as upon all Europe.
The Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate, by authority of the apostolic and
prophetic office before God and before the Mystical Body of Christ, which
is the true Church of Christ, hereby declares before all Christians of the world (Mt 18:18): The anti-Church of England is no longer the Church of Christ but spiritual Babylon and the harlot of antichrist (Rev 17:1-6). We hereby call upon every member of this Church to be converted, to repent and to go out from that spiritual Babylon (Isa 52:11). The spirit of antichrist cast the Spirit of God out of this Church. All who want to be saved must separate from this anti-Church because it leads the deceived souls to eternal damnation in hell. This anti-Church has become a synagogue of Satan (see Rev 3:9; Rev 2:20-24) and preaches a different gospel. “Even if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel to you, let him be accursed.” (Gal 1:8-9) By reason of apostasy from the Gospel of God, God has cast this curse upon the anti-Church of England.
On behalf of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate
+ Elijah
Patriarch
+ Methodius OSBMr + Timothy OSBMr
Secretaries of the BCP
Lvov (Ukraine), 12
July 2011
Copies to:
- Queen Elizabeth II and Government of Great Britain
- Presidents of EU member states and MEPs
- All Churches of Great Britain and Christian Churches of the world
- Mass media of Great Britain and the EU
24 June 2011
The hell of aural leakage and imposition
A thought provoking piece from Kester, here: Kester Brewin � Tsskk Tsskk… Why Do Kids Play Music on Buses?
As a teacher Kester is rightly concerned in this article to understand the thing from the participant-actor's point of view. First of all on 'aural imposition' (my term): "Some students who were interviewed for the piece didn’t think that playing music was antisocial, just that the bus was too quiet and they wanted something to listen to. However, a sociologist sees it being more about marking out ownership of space. This can be done physically – by lolling out and taking up a number of seats. It could also be done graphically by ‘tagging’ around various places. But the most immediate and obvious way of stating that you have control over a space is aurally because it flows so widely."
Now this is relatively rare in my experience (mercifully). And I think that I disagree with the sociologist's interpretation. Drawing on my own youth when, I confess, I went through a phase of doing rather similar things (only the technology was different -remember cassettes?) what I was doing was not claiming space. In the exuberance of youth I wanted to share what I enjoyed musically. I just didn't really have any idea that -as I now realise- if others didn't really like Wishbone Ash or Pink Floyd that I'd be vexing them greatly. So that's what I've assumed is going on. However, it hasn't helped me devise an intervention that I could feel would work without getting awkward or nasty. Sometimes bus drivers intervene to enforce no-music, often not.
Aural leakage, on the other hand is when someone has the ear-buds in but they are in the process of going deaf (and there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum in that) because the thin, tinny, escaped sound is irritating fellow passengers. Sometimes I've seen this challenged, particularly in the quiet carriage on a train. It seems easier to challenge: after all the user by having ear-buds in signals that they are trying to be considerate of others, so there is a basis on which to approach them to ask for the volume to be turned down.
So maybe the leakage scenario helps us to understand the imposition scenario. In the latter there is clearly no attempt to use means to minimise intrusion on others: it is desired that we should hear. Well, perhaps not always; quite often what is happening is that a handful of teens (in my experience) are sharing snippets of stuff they like with one another; perhaps they aren't really considering the wider impact at all, or if they do they may consider that they are educating the rest of us in what real music is.
I'm considering carrying around a set of those cheap £1 earbud sets and offering them to the polluters so they can share in private.
As a teacher Kester is rightly concerned in this article to understand the thing from the participant-actor's point of view. First of all on 'aural imposition' (my term): "Some students who were interviewed for the piece didn’t think that playing music was antisocial, just that the bus was too quiet and they wanted something to listen to. However, a sociologist sees it being more about marking out ownership of space. This can be done physically – by lolling out and taking up a number of seats. It could also be done graphically by ‘tagging’ around various places. But the most immediate and obvious way of stating that you have control over a space is aurally because it flows so widely."
Now this is relatively rare in my experience (mercifully). And I think that I disagree with the sociologist's interpretation. Drawing on my own youth when, I confess, I went through a phase of doing rather similar things (only the technology was different -remember cassettes?) what I was doing was not claiming space. In the exuberance of youth I wanted to share what I enjoyed musically. I just didn't really have any idea that -as I now realise- if others didn't really like Wishbone Ash or Pink Floyd that I'd be vexing them greatly. So that's what I've assumed is going on. However, it hasn't helped me devise an intervention that I could feel would work without getting awkward or nasty. Sometimes bus drivers intervene to enforce no-music, often not.
Aural leakage, on the other hand is when someone has the ear-buds in but they are in the process of going deaf (and there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum in that) because the thin, tinny, escaped sound is irritating fellow passengers. Sometimes I've seen this challenged, particularly in the quiet carriage on a train. It seems easier to challenge: after all the user by having ear-buds in signals that they are trying to be considerate of others, so there is a basis on which to approach them to ask for the volume to be turned down.
So maybe the leakage scenario helps us to understand the imposition scenario. In the latter there is clearly no attempt to use means to minimise intrusion on others: it is desired that we should hear. Well, perhaps not always; quite often what is happening is that a handful of teens (in my experience) are sharing snippets of stuff they like with one another; perhaps they aren't really considering the wider impact at all, or if they do they may consider that they are educating the rest of us in what real music is.
I'm considering carrying around a set of those cheap £1 earbud sets and offering them to the polluters so they can share in private.
23 April 2011
I'm not stuck in a crowd -I am the crowd!
It's a while since I posted under my new 'hell is other people' tag, but this article set me in mind of it. I'd mentioned that my frustrations are often in crowds, and this article seems to identify some significant observations (related to chaos and complexity research).
a pedestrian seeks simply to minimize congestion in his visual field by walking towards the empty spaces he can see, while at the same time adjusting his speed in order to maintain a safe distance from the nearest obstacle. Digital simulations using this model have demonstrated that these two simple rules are sufficient to reproduce a broad range of the collective behaviors observed in crowds, such as the spontaneous formation of unidirectional lanes in opposite directions. Furthermore, as the density of pedestrians increases, the model can predict the emergence of new phenomena, such as the accordion effect characterized by successive forward waves of movement, interspersed with periods during which the pedestrians stand still (stop-and-go). Above a critical density threshold, a combination of these rules with the effect of physical contacts between pedestrians can spontaneously provoke gigantic, collective crushes. This phenomenon, referred to as turbulence, was observed during the accidents that occurred in Mecca in 2006 and characterizes the dynamics of a crowd in a dangerous situation, where pedestrians are overwhelmed by chaotic movement.Now I can identify very easily with the basic strategy outlined above: I have realised that it's what I do. I think though, that where it goes wrong for me is that I tend to walk a darn sight faster than most people and so the flow and response manoeuvres of others So, in effect, as I suspected, I'm causing turbulence -reminds me of the 'not stuck in traffic you are traffic' issue. So, once again, 'hell is other people' becomes reflexive: we can't just objectivise it we have to view ourselves as part of the system and attend to our own part in it. Nothing surprising for a Christian perspective there: '... first take the log out of your own eye ...'.
20 February 2011
Hell is other people
I was talking with my parents the other day and we got to talking about the way that people behave in city centres. We started with the difficulties of multiple queues (more later perhaps) and then onto the more free-flowing vexation which is trying to walk somewhere in a crowd of people who are all intent on shopping and sauntering with friends or hurrying their kids along, or holding an over-loud conversation remotely via their mobile phone, or avoiding the Big Issue seller or the chuggers ...
Now before I go of on the one that I'm intending to write up shortly, a couple or three things to say. The first is that I'm considering a new label for posts on this topic: "hell-is-others" but I do think that it should be taken along with this article which puts a positive side to the phenomena of human sociality.
Another thing to say is about human sociality is the observation that we humans manage to be fairly hyper social without reducing our individual members to the status of mere organelles in a superorganism (cf ants, termites or social bees). If you compare us with the great apes, like chimpanzees, our ability to co-operate without agression and violence is quite remarkable. Chimpanzees rarely manage to sustain groups of more than about 20 and even those groups have horrific levels of violence in them. By comparison we can manage to sustain high density living for millions with relatively low levels of violence.
And the other thing to say is that I quite often find myself in a city centre at a peak crowd time and realise that I do just the same things that I find challenging about other people in crowds, so in what I'm about to say there is a degree of 'You are the man' reflected back on me.
Anyhow the fact is that I find myself every so often repeating in my mind Sartre's most famous quotation, l'enfer, c'est les autres ('Hell is other people')". The reason is usually something like this: I'm walking along at my usual pace. My usual pace is, admittedly, quite quick: most people have a little trouble keeping up; I'm long-legged and not afraid to use it! However, this means that it is challenging for me to avoid people who unlookingly change course or suddenly stop and it is irritatingly demanding to maintain a steady pace and course. The scene is set for a degree of frustration as I have to change, pace, direction, or even stop suddenly for people who seem to have forgotten that they are NOT the only people using the space. My irritation finds expression in the 'Hell is other people' phrase (though I'll often also say to myself in French too).
Of course there are two main types of offenders: the heedless and the arrogant. The heedless are those who simply are intent on other things and forget or don't notice that their sudden course change or stop is likely to create and obstacle for others. It's a good thing that the max speed being achieved is around 4 kph or there could be some serious collisions: it's almost as if we've evolved a walking speed and reaction times to match each other (!!). The heedless (of whom I am dispiritingly often one) merely fail to assign attention to their surroundings, probably because we tend to assume that most of us are going the same way and that the general lack of collisions means that we can continue much as we always do. I remind myself that most people's heedfulness quotient is not constructed with the high speed walker such as myself in view.
But then we have the seemingly arrogant: these are the people who seem to think that others should move for them and be mindful of them but not the other way round. These seem to include certain young men, often in groups for whom territorial display seems to be the name of the game, and some people using wheeled aids to travel -I say some; there are a good many thoughtful people out there too. However, there are some who seem to think that their mobility issues entitle them to be careless of others, and they often get away with it because others, not wanting to suffer injury or insult, co-operate by getting out of the way. This category of people can include some motability scooter-users, some wheelchair users and some pushchair pushers.
My appeal is for us all to try to recall in public, crowded spaces that it may be well to look around whenever we change course or speed to make sure that we are not about to bump someone else, and if we fail to do so to apologise.
On that latter point: a few times lately I have found myself uttering that automatic British "sorry" on nearly bumping into someone and then my analysis of what has happened kicks in: actually it wasn't my fault; it's not me who should be saying sorry. If the other person has said 'sorry', all well and good. If they have not: well, that's annoying; that they have not had their selfish or heedless behaviour challenged but may have been confirmed in their sense of entitlement to un-co-operative pedestrian behaviour.
No Exit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
I think that this article on the idea (referred to above) is definitely worth reading.
Now before I go of on the one that I'm intending to write up shortly, a couple or three things to say. The first is that I'm considering a new label for posts on this topic: "hell-is-others" but I do think that it should be taken along with this article which puts a positive side to the phenomena of human sociality.
Another thing to say is about human sociality is the observation that we humans manage to be fairly hyper social without reducing our individual members to the status of mere organelles in a superorganism (cf ants, termites or social bees). If you compare us with the great apes, like chimpanzees, our ability to co-operate without agression and violence is quite remarkable. Chimpanzees rarely manage to sustain groups of more than about 20 and even those groups have horrific levels of violence in them. By comparison we can manage to sustain high density living for millions with relatively low levels of violence.
And the other thing to say is that I quite often find myself in a city centre at a peak crowd time and realise that I do just the same things that I find challenging about other people in crowds, so in what I'm about to say there is a degree of 'You are the man' reflected back on me.
Anyhow the fact is that I find myself every so often repeating in my mind Sartre's most famous quotation, l'enfer, c'est les autres ('Hell is other people')". The reason is usually something like this: I'm walking along at my usual pace. My usual pace is, admittedly, quite quick: most people have a little trouble keeping up; I'm long-legged and not afraid to use it! However, this means that it is challenging for me to avoid people who unlookingly change course or suddenly stop and it is irritatingly demanding to maintain a steady pace and course. The scene is set for a degree of frustration as I have to change, pace, direction, or even stop suddenly for people who seem to have forgotten that they are NOT the only people using the space. My irritation finds expression in the 'Hell is other people' phrase (though I'll often also say to myself in French too).
Of course there are two main types of offenders: the heedless and the arrogant. The heedless are those who simply are intent on other things and forget or don't notice that their sudden course change or stop is likely to create and obstacle for others. It's a good thing that the max speed being achieved is around 4 kph or there could be some serious collisions: it's almost as if we've evolved a walking speed and reaction times to match each other (!!). The heedless (of whom I am dispiritingly often one) merely fail to assign attention to their surroundings, probably because we tend to assume that most of us are going the same way and that the general lack of collisions means that we can continue much as we always do. I remind myself that most people's heedfulness quotient is not constructed with the high speed walker such as myself in view.
But then we have the seemingly arrogant: these are the people who seem to think that others should move for them and be mindful of them but not the other way round. These seem to include certain young men, often in groups for whom territorial display seems to be the name of the game, and some people using wheeled aids to travel -I say some; there are a good many thoughtful people out there too. However, there are some who seem to think that their mobility issues entitle them to be careless of others, and they often get away with it because others, not wanting to suffer injury or insult, co-operate by getting out of the way. This category of people can include some motability scooter-users, some wheelchair users and some pushchair pushers.
My appeal is for us all to try to recall in public, crowded spaces that it may be well to look around whenever we change course or speed to make sure that we are not about to bump someone else, and if we fail to do so to apologise.
On that latter point: a few times lately I have found myself uttering that automatic British "sorry" on nearly bumping into someone and then my analysis of what has happened kicks in: actually it wasn't my fault; it's not me who should be saying sorry. If the other person has said 'sorry', all well and good. If they have not: well, that's annoying; that they have not had their selfish or heedless behaviour challenged but may have been confirmed in their sense of entitlement to un-co-operative pedestrian behaviour.
No Exit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
I think that this article on the idea (referred to above) is definitely worth reading.
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