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A man calling himself the “Traffic Light Doctor” on TikTok has gone viral explaining why you shouldn’t press the pedestrian button at a crosswalk more than once.
“Lucky for you, I have a key to the traffic signal controller cabinet,” he begins his explanation, “and I can show what exactly happens when you press one of these push buttons.
“So when you press this button, it actually connects two logics together. So in short terms, it connects point A to point B.
“So these buttons out here are actually wired in to this PLC [programmable logic controller] board.
“This board here is controlled by this CCU [computer control unit] from Polara.
“The CCU will get the input from the push buttons and complete continuity from the buttons to this back board here in this cabinet, which is then ran by these cables that go into the controller of the intersection, which then allows it to put in a call that allows you to get the walk signal to cross the street.”
He then demonstrates how pressing the pedestrian button more than once accomplishes absolutely nothing.
“So it doesn’t matter if you press this button one time or a hundred times, it’s still going to do the same thing and just receive a call, and it won’t drop out until that call is answered,” he says. “Once it’s answered, it will drop out, and that button will be back to where it was prior to you ever pressing it.
“So feel free to push these buttons as many times as you want to.”
@trafficlightdoctor Replying to @odis ♬ original sound – 🚦 Traffic Light Doctor 🚦
Naturally, people had questions and many, many comments.
“What about 3 sec hold?” one viewer asked.
“Wow not placebo buttons,” someone else commented.
“I like pushing it multiple times, not because it makes it go faster, but because the ‘wait’ voice sounds like a duck,” another wrote.
“I don’t believe you,” read another comment. “There is a small man that lives in the lights that controls everything. And you can’t change my mind.”
“Yeah, but it makes me feel better,” read several other comments.
“For me, I don’t doubt the process when I press the button. I doubt in the integrity of the button to work when I press the button the first time,” another person wrote, echoing many other people.
Wait… so does this also mean that pushing the floor number button in an elevator more than once doesn’t actually get you to your floor any faster?