Borked traffic lights in NYC

Posted on February 21, 2009 by | 8 Comments

Taken on the corner of 14th Street and Avenue C in Manhattan on February 21st, 2009:
funny pictures
moar funny pictures

Advertisement
This entry was posted in Humor. Bookmark the permalink.

8 responses to “Borked traffic lights in NYC”

  1. Joe | February 21, 2009 at 11:33 pm |

    This has been happening all over town lately. There was an article in the Times about it recently. The old WALK/DON’T WALK signs were replaced 7-8 years ago by these LED pictograms. The new lights are reaching the end of their lifespan and have chosen to fail in this confusing manner.

  2. Arikia | February 21, 2009 at 11:59 pm |

    Yeah I’ve totes seen that around Brooklyn and had the Fail Blog impulse myself! I’ve never been quick on the draw with the camera though. Kudos!

  3. "GrrlScientist" | February 22, 2009 at 2:18 am |

    indeed, these are all over manhattan, and in any other city, where jaywalking is a crime, i suppose this would be a problem, but not in manhattan!
    reporting in from freezing cold helsinki,

  4. Bob O'H | February 22, 2009 at 3:14 am |

    I don’t think it’s a fail – it’s a warning to run away, because the Red Hand Gang is coming. And you wouldn’t want to be caught Red Handed.

  5. jay | February 22, 2009 at 9:23 am |

    This is probably an intentionsl failure mode.
    Traffic lights are required by design specification to have multiple parallel control systems, i.e. if the green light control system malfunctions, there is a second validation mode which shares none of the original control system and can see that it’s trying to go green both ways. The conflict between the two modes forces a compromise failsafe (typicallly blinking red).
    It is important that the failsafe mode be readily identifiable as a malfunction while at the same time not contributing to unnecessary danger.
    Failure of the crosswalk mechanism probably defaults to this obviously incorrect state rather than fool a pedestrian into thinking it’s working.

  6. opony szczecin | February 22, 2009 at 12:04 pm |

    it means smack that or runaway…:)

  7. opony szczecin | February 22, 2009 at 12:06 pm |

    sorry…smack that and runaway 🙂

  8. Art | February 22, 2009 at 5:12 pm |

    Come on y’all.
    The message is clear: Hand + Walk = walk on your hands.
    I ken y’all bein highly edjumicated and havin all thems lofty thoughts means ya miss the ground balls sometime.