Push it; push it good!

I haven’t quite worked out the psychology surrounding people and the ‘walk’ button at traffic lights.

I’d like to think of myself as a bit of a ‘footpath expert’, having travelled many streets as I run around and around my local suburbs on a daily basis (and that disturbing behaviour will need to be dealt with at a later point!). So I think I know what I’m talking about when I say that intelligent pedestrians revert to toddlers when they see the walk button.

They push it.

Fair enough, that’s the plan, I’m pretty sure.

But then they push it again. Repeatedly.

They all know it doesn’t make the lights change any faster, but they press it numerous times – sometimes desisting and then returning again for another few pushes!

I always have a smile to myself when the second person inevitably arrives - having seen the first person engage in the act of button pressing - and they lean in, across them, to press it again. Do they think the first person may have made a mistake? How many people walking the streets are incapable of executing an accurate button press?

I am also guilty of the behaviour. I hang my head in shame. But, if I can redeem myself, I am smart enough to be sneaky! After all, I don’t want other pedestrians to know that I am also a ‘multi-presser’. So, I like to hold my hand casually on the button and do a whole heap of secret presses… clever….

The most disturbing part is, whilst I’m doing it, I know it’s futile. It doesn’t work. Never before in the history of traffic lights has it actually brought the light change even a nano-second earlier.

So what’s going on here? What’s with all the button pressing? I’d like to sum up with a pithy sentence highlighting a truth about the impatience of humanity, but I actually think we’re all just a little bit deranged…..